The book
Read the narrative
It began with a hat. European gentlemen wanted felt that would not lose its shape in the rain, and only beaver underfur would make it — so a want nobody in this valley could have named reached across an ocean and set three empires at each other's throats over a swamp. Thirteen movements follow that arithmetic down: the drowned lakebed, the nations, the forts, the drained swamp, the Glass City and the rust after it — every comer certain the ground was his, and the river keeping none of their claims and all of their names.
Begin the book →For the drive
Listen
The whole narrative read aloud, movement by movement — most of them about the length of one commute. Rendered on the author’s own machine and served from this domain, like everything else here.
Hear the valley →The whole span
Timeline
The major currents of the storehouse on one interactive spine — from the ice and the animals through the confederacy wars, 1812, removal, and the Glass City, braided with the bloodline the two novels follow. Pick a thread and watch it run the whole length.
Follow the threads →The first crossing
Apekonit
The storehouse as a life — Apekonit, William Wells, the Kentucky boy taken at twelve and loved into the Miami nation, and Wanangapeth, the chief’s daughter who married the seam. The crossing whose daughters Amehkoonsihkwa inherits.
Read the first crossing →The second reading
Amehkoonsihkwa
Mary Wells Wolcott — Amehkoonsihkwa, Little Turtle’s granddaughter, keeping house over the town rising on her grandfather’s battlefield — and Frances Slocum (Maconaquah), the white child carried the other way. The crossing’s two daughters; the same valley and years, read a second way.
Read the daughters’ book →The adaptation
The Screen
The valley's central tragedy as a feature film — No Such Claim, the Tecumseh story between two armies. Read the screenplay, the beat sheet, and the treatment.
Enter the adaptation →The cast
The People
The war chiefs, generals, and go-betweens the story names — Little Turtle, Tecumseh, Wayne, Perry — briefly drawn, in the order the land met them.
The people of the story →The companion
The Soundtrack
One song for each of the thirteen movements — Jay-Z, Kanye West, Frank Ocean, Kid Cudi — matched to the chapter by theme, not by chart. With links to hear each on Spotify, Apple Music, or YouTube.
Play the movements →The places
The Ground
Every located place in the book on a map of the valley as it is now — the forts, the battlefields, the treaty squares. Each one carries how well the record actually knows where it stands, and Fallen Timbers appears twice, because for a hundred and thirty years everyone stood in the wrong field.
Stand where it happened →The archive
The Research Store
Every claim in the book stands on a verified source. Search the archived full texts — the treaties, the Jesuit Relations, the American State Papers — and the distilled facts behind the story.
Search the archive →