The Cornelius–Gilley Saga
The Cornelius–Gilley Saga is a sweeping, multi-generational series that follows one American family from a small Belgian village to the wide skies of Kansas. It begins in the 1760s, when Petrus and Elisabeth Cornelius risk a perilous Atlantic crossing to New York, and their son Peter “Dox” Cornelius comes of age in a world on fire—fighting the British as a teenage patriot in 1781 and again in 1814. The story continues with Dust and Honor, tracing Peter Cornelius through the rough, booming 19th c
House of Dox
A Revolutionary War Novel
In the 1760s, Belgian immigrants Petrus and Elisabeth Cornelius cross to Albany, where their son Peter “Dox” grows up amid whispers of revolution. At thirteen he runs to war at Fort Griswold, and decades later faces the British again at Plattsburgh, embodying one family’s gritty fight to belong in young America.
Dust and Honor - The Story of Peter Cornelius
One Man's Journey Through 19th Century America
Peter Cornelius crosses nineteenth-century America from New York farms to Kansas wind, shaped by his grandfather Dox’s war stories. He aids the Underground Railroad, rides with the 2nd Indiana Cavalry, survives prison, and later brushes the Dalton Gang and Bat Masterson. Three marriages and eight children turn his journey into a family epic.
A Century on the Plains
A Kansas Family’s Journey Through Wars, Work, and American Newsreels
Born in 1901 in Kinsley, Kansas, Dean A. Gilley comes of age amid war, raises a son and twin daughters through the Depression, World War II, and searing losses, and briefly chases big-city dreams in 1930s New York—an ordinary family enduring an extraordinary American century of upheaval and change.