The Trail Makers - Book By Lewis B. Miller Synopsis: Doctor Gates owns a large, well-established plantation in a fertile semi-prairie region on the southwest frontier. Beside the younger members of his remaining motherless family, the plantation is occupied by servants and slaves. Due to unfortunate events that occurred in early family life, Dr. Gates decides to leave this lawless country to go west, away from all civilization to live in peace the rest of his life. With four covered wagons and forty oxen the Gates tribe treks on with all their possessions, the slaves and their sibling. When they reached the place where all roads ended, the Gates' trail begins. Through an unbroken realm of brush, thicket, river and mountain, the trail bends westward for hundreds of miles, until Dr. Gates at last discovers a large cove, where he settles. Here a new plantation is built and the whole Gates clan lives a solitary life for years. Although they move away from the unruly country, other settlers follow the Gates Trail and in time they receive visitors from the other world. It is from such visitors that the fate of the Dr. Gates family is revealed and reconciled. This is the only story of Lewis B. Miller, found to be based on romance. When teenage girls who have lived a solitary life for an overdue time meet lovers that traveled drastic trails to find them, readers are moved to share compassionate empathy. About the Author: Among the least known but better authors of tales of adventure in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century era was Texan Lewis B. Miller, whose stories appeared in serial form in a weekly farm paper, The National Stockman and Farmer, and a regional edition of the publication, The Pennsylvania Stockman and Farmer. Lewis B. Miller was born at Blocker Creek, Cooke County, Texas, on May 27, 1861. His father’s name was Henry Miller and his mother Lurilla Osburn Miller. He received his early education in frontier schools in Texas. In 1881 he obtained an A.B. degree at Texas Christian University. He moved to Marlin, Texas, in 1931, apparently to live with relatives, and died there on July 26, 1933. He was buried at Hico, Texas, which is about 70 miles southwest of Fort Worth. Lewis B. Miller was an excellent writer with a good education, and his stories were very accurate from a geographical and historical standpoint. He wrote adult, young adult tales of adventure, dealings with frontier life, cattle driving. His base writing is about the southwest frontier pushing civilization into the wild west, French and Spanish territories or into the Indian’s hunting grounds. Besides frontier life, his novels cover a wide field of subjects, such as: homesteading, trapping, hunting, fur trading, logging, rafting, gold-seeking, Indian life and about all that confronted frontier life which most Americans have forgotten and many have never known. Many early American statesmen and patriotic pioneers appear in his stories, who are authentic. The frontier stories involved confrontation with the Indians and the hard life of the pioneers. Due to the fact that Miller’s stories appeared originally only in a farm weekly, they did not receive a wide circulation and thus remained unknown to much of the reading public. This neglect has been partially corrected by a small church foundation press in Pennsylvania. They have published a number of soft cover reprints of his work and more are pending. For those who collect adventure books for the pleasure of reading, there can be no better investment than in Lewis B. Miller tales. By Robert E. Walters