Outskirts Press, INC.

You have heard of the Bates motel, but what of Potts’s Inn?

In the 1820’s Norm and Catherine Pierce decide to immigrate with their children to the new state of Illinois. But to do so, they must pass through Western Kentucky and southern Illinois—areas known for dangerous outlaws and robbers. True, the heyday of brigandage seems to have to have passed, with the deaths of the Harpe brothers—perhaps America’s first serial killers—and Sam Mason, the leader of the Cave-in-Rock river boat pirates. But unbeknownst by the Pierces, a new Cave-in-Rock gang has been gathered by James Ford, a former sheriff and present justice of the peace. The owner of a ferry, Ford steers wealthy land travelers to the inn of his ally, Billy Potts, sr. who with his wife murders them. Dr. Charles Webb escapes from the Cave-in-Rock gang. In the forest he meets Cassandra, a beautiful young woman, who guides him to her father’s estate, where the young man may be cared for. But soon he learns her father is James Ford, the very man rumored to lead the Cave-in-Rock gang. Ford treats him benevolently, and, when Webb and Cassandra marry, Ford sets the younger man up in a profitable medical practice, yet Webb cannot dodge the suspicion that his father-in-law is somehow connected with the river pirates. After a harrowing odyssey through the woods, pursued by Ford’s gang, the Pierces arrive at a Fort set up by travelers, who have escaped the outlaws and decided to band together for protection. Suspicions about Ford grow. The Pierces and others hope that a lawsuit will force evidence about Ford’s criminal double life to the surface, but the judge throws out the case. Then the Pierces, Webb, who now believes in Ford’s guilt, and others must decide whether to take the law into their own hands and execute Ford.