A Century on the Plains

A Kansas Family’s Journey Through Wars, Work, and American Newsreels

Book III of The Cornelius–Gilley Saga

   This story follows Dean A. Gilley from his 1901 birth in Kinsley, Kansas through a lifetime of upheaval and wonder. He comes of age as classmates leave for WW1, raises a son and twin daughters with the love of his life, and fights to keep them afloat through the Great Depression, WW2, and family tragedies that never quite break them.

   For a brief, electric stretch in the mid-1930s, the entire Gilley family trades wheat fields for tenements and theaters in New York City. Across one long life, Dean witnesses the leap from early airplanes and rattling automobiles to rockets on the moon and modern cars—proving how an ordinary family can weather an extraordinary century together.