Far Stones

In hill country Texas, 1864, eleven year-old twins Tom and Stefan Spiess, free boys of color, are tossing a baseball they stole from white boys when still in St. Louis. The spring breeze is shattered by war cries as Tom is stripped naked and ridden off by Comanches. As their parents are slaughtered, his identical twin Stefan escapes. Tom survives his brutal initiation into Comanche ways and finds powerful spirit medicine in the unforgotten feel and found symbols of his beloved baseball. He grows into a full-fledged warrior named Far Stones who eventually has a family of his own and sustains the same threats to a cherished way of life as the rest of his tribe and other plains Indians.


His identical twin Stefan deals with his parents’ mutilated bodies and embarks on a decade-long search for his brother. As an orphan slave he struggles to survive in a world he can barely control, clinging to the spirit of his hero Uncle Tom of Stowe’s novel. His charm and resourcefulness find him the kindness of strangers, and the unshakable love for his lost twin is buoyed by memories of their shared bond of baseball. Eventually he finds his way into the company of Buffalo soldiers, but fearing their relentless campaign against the Indians will kill his brother he pursues other methods of tracking him down. However, he is not prepared for the wide gap that separates them, of three cultures in tragic conflict. Throughout, love of the nascent game of baseball abides.


Loren Woodson was born in Schenectady, New York, spent his early youth in small town Connecticut and Kentucky, moving to Southern California at age fifteen where he has lived ever since. He attended Pomona College and UCLA and received his M.D. from the University of Southern California, and his PhD from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute. He is Board Certified in Psychiatry. Baseball hooked him from when he first caught one. He lives with his artist wife near their children and grandchildren in Santa Monica, California, where he plays brass and woodwinds and coaches Little League.