by Jan Smith
This book continues Nivek’s story in 1898. Leaving his family’s homestead, Nivek becomes a newspaper correspondent during the Spanish-American War. Together with his boyhood friends, Wing, an Ojibwa Indian, and Jesse, from Medora, North Dakota, the young men travel across country by horseback, train, and stagecoach to join Theodore Roosevelt and the Rough Riders.
The narrative — a coming-of-age tale of courage, hardship, and patriotism — is about their journey, the training of the troops, and the war in Cuba. Dispatcher Nivek wrote for the “Minnesota News” while he was a reporter for Roosevelt’s Rough Riders and gave his personal account of that era.