The Jayhawker
When Norm and Marsha operated The Blue Valley Gazette in the early 1980s, a country weekly newspaper serving the Stanley-Stilwell area of Johnson County, Kansas, they focused on the rich history of the region. Readers greeted that kind of material with enthusiasm and, besides a thirst for “news” of who visited whom for coffee, gave it highest 
priority in their demands.
One response by the mom-and-pop co-publishers was to show, by a serialized fictional account, how Kansas turned from a territory invaded by Missouri proslavers into a so-called Free State run by abolitionists. The Jayhawker ran for 114 illustrated episodes over a three-year period and captured the imagination of thousands of readers.
The intent behind the series was to show how the violence of the 1850s Border War was calmed by unusual courage—the political courage of Territorial Governor Robert J. Walker—so that a democratic outcome might launch Kansas toward statehood free of slavery.
The story opens with John Brown’s arrival in Kansas Territory. He is accompanied by Malcolm Erskine, a mixed-race drifter who is assigned a liaison role with the Shawnees then dominating the eastern portion of the Territory. A tragic outcome of this alliance turns Erskine into a fiery partisan against Missouri “bushwhackers” and drives him into leadership among retaliating Kansas “jayhawkers.”
This adventure/romance—historically accurate in times, places, events, and in the involvement of many players such as James Butler Hickok (later “Wild Bill”)—turns Erskine into a liberating hero. But Brown’s brand of vengeance tears at Malcolm’s conscience, and challenges to his own part-African identity erode Erskine’s faith and trust.
Only through the love of an unusually bright woman does he “find himself” and, at an opportune moment, does he help lead Governor Walker toward a political decision that quiets border warfare and delivers freedom to all Kansans.