Zeke and Ned by Larry McMurtry Diana Ossana, (1997)

1997 1st edition Simon & Schuster

With this new historical Western, Larry McMurtry returns to the genre in which he created such memorable characters as Augustus McCrae and Woodrow Call. In collaboration with Pretty Boy Floyd coauthor Diana Ossana, he dramatizes the Cherokee struggle for independence following the Civil War. Ezekiel Proctor and Ned Christie are the last Cherokee warriors, men of legend and history, whose fates are a consequence of such brutal policies as the Indian Removal Act of 1830 and the infamous Trail of Tears. They struggle to find honor in a harsh, violent land under the relentless pressure of white law and broken promises. Every bit as tough as their men, the women in Zeke and Ned are determined to raise their families and keep the two men alive--whatever it takes.

From Library Journal
McMurty and Ossana employ a technique they used successfully in Pretty Boy Floyd, in which a historical character of legendary proportions become the hero of a modern work of fiction. This work focuses on Zeke Proctor and Ned Christic, Cherokee Indians who became folk heroes in the Oklahoma Territory. Unforgiven wrongs that festered since the removal of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia in the 1830s become a moving force in the story of a casual love affair gone awry and the bloody feud and even bloodier legal actions that transpire when federal judges intervene. McMurty paints Zeke's courtship, murder trial, and marriage debacle with broad humor, and Ossana takes the story home with Ned's four-year standoff of armed federal marshals dispatched to take him dead or alive. A wonderfully readable historical novel that furthers the understanding of the Native-white disputes of the last century.