Before the Reckoning, there was the Rising. In the wake of the Civil War, the prairie town of Coldwater, Kansas is still finding its shape-restless, divided, and perched on the edge of change. For Will Mertens, a quiet German immigrant carving a life from the unforgiving soil, the war never reached his doorstep-but its consequences are everywhere. When Mary Harper, the defiant daughter of a local matriarch, falls into his life, their union will challenge every unspoken rule of Coldwater's rigid social order. As the years pass, Will and Mary build something rare: a family, a farm, a fragile peace. But bitterness festers in the town. New arrivals, vanishing Osage lands, and the promise of a railroad begin to tear Coldwater at the seams. When tragedy strikes, Will is left clinging to the life he built with bare hands-and wondering if it was ever truly his. Far to the south, in the wounded heart of Alabama, Alice Payne fights her own quiet war. Teaching in a burned-out town still haunted by slavery and loss, she dreams of something greater. Her escape west will bring her face to face with Coldwater...and with the buried griefs that shape it. Spanning the years 1863 to 1872, Coldwater Rising is the powerful prequel to Coldwater Reckoning, and Book Two of the Coldwater Trilogy. It is a story of hard choices, quiet endurance, and the generations forever changed by the promise-and the cost-of the American frontier.