Black Storm Comin': Gallop Most Out Of My Skin - Tapa dura

On the eve of the Civil War, Colton Wescott is "a boy with a foot in each of two worlds-the black and the white, the slave and the free, the East and the West." On his way west by wagon train, Colton is shot by his father who disappears, and the family eventually stalls before making it to California. But Colton sees a poster advertising for Pony Express riders and sees a chance to become a man in his father's place. He'll relay freedom papers from his mother to her sister in Sacramento and carry an important message from Washington about a plot to blow up forts and steal ammunition in an attempt to support the South in the coming war. Driving the historic Pony Express route, visiting museums and bookstores and reading journals, letters and obituaries, Wilson has done the research to make the story alive and immediate. An exciting story written with style. (map, author's note) (Fiction. 10-14) (Kirkus Reviews)

Forced to tend to his mother and two sisters by himself while on the wagon train to California, biracial Colton Wescott and his family have great difficulties and are shunned by others, thus Colton decides to join up with the Pony Express in the hopes of making money for his family, knowing that he is risking his life if his true identity is ever discovered.