The five historical novels that Ken Englade wrote for HarperCollins's "Tony Hillerman's Frontier" series deal with a little-recorded period of American history: the pre-Civil War days in what now are the states of Nebraska, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.

After a prodigious amount of research, Englade created a series of memorable characters -- Anglo, Indian, and Hispanic, male and female, military and civilian -- who, combined with actual figures from the period, help clarify events that shaped the region's future. Each of the books revolves around an event that defined the specific time and place, one leading to the next to show the progression of developments that formed the tapestry of history.

In  chronological order, the books are:

This book chronicles the journey West of the series' two protagonists, Brevet Second Lieutenant Jean Benoit and Lieutenant Jason Dobbs, an Army surgeon. The time is 1854 and the principal locale is Fort Laramie, then an important way-station on the heavily traveled Oregon Trail. The story, which culminates in what is called the Grattan Massacre, unfolds from dual viewpoints, the Brulé Sioux and the Cheyenne on the one hand, the Army and the Westward-headed pioneers on the other. 

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 Set in 1855, this book details the Army's retaliation for the Grattan Massacre in a slaughter of its own, a carefully planned attack on an encampment of unsuspecting Sioux. Considerable attention is given to life among four of the more prominent Plains tribes: the Arapahos, the Brulé Sioux, the Cheyenne and the Pawnee, with particular emphasis on a rarely mentioned Pawnee ceremony in which a young girl is sacrificed to the god called Morning Star.

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The focus in this book, where the time remains 1855, is on developments in the Army, which is beginning to gear up for the inevitable War Between the States.

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It is 1857, two years later. Again, the Army is taking the field against the Indians, this time against the Cheyenne, who have been killing settlers and taking hostages -- a situation that has caused much resentment in Washington. The two forces clash on the banks of the Solomon River in Kansas and the Cheyenne are routed. 

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 Set in 1858, the underlying theme is the coming war between North and South. In the meantime, the locale for the series moves to New Mexico, which has only recently become part of the United States after 250 years as an outpost of Spain and a much shorter existence under Mexico. Benoit, who is relieved at first to be away from the seemingly constant battles between the Army and the Plains tribes, finds himself immersed in another conflict: a vicious struggle for control of the Catholic church, which is the single most significant influence in the new Territory. Unsuspecting, he is thrust into the heart of the dispute when he is assigned to help solve  the murder of a priest who had been killed by poisoned sacramental wine.

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