Today’s WordPress writing prompt asks: What’s a book that completely surprised you?

For me, the answer is a little different because the book that surprised me most was not sitting on a bookstore shelf when I first encountered it.

It was still becoming.

The book is Zeke of Goingsnake: Based on the Life and Times of Ezekiel Proctor by Jerra Rose, and what makes this moment especially meaningful is that the author is my mother.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom.

As a Mother’s Day gift, I preordered the book to support her, and the release is scheduled for May 15. That alone would be exciting, but this story has been part of my life in pieces for a while now.

I have been close enough to the process to read drafts, offer feedback, and offer insights along the way when I found something that seemed useful. But this book has been in the works for a very long time. From my own memory, my mother may have started researching this story close to twenty years ago, while working full time and living a busy life.

This was never something she rushed.

It was something she carried.

Returned to.

And kept bringing forward in the time she could give it.

But I want to be clear: this is not my accomplishment.

This is hers.

I was simply close enough to see the work.

The persistence.

The research.

The love.

And that is part of what surprised me.

I knew this book mattered to my family. I knew it carried personal meaning. I knew it reached into Cherokee history, family legacy, and the life of Ezekiel Proctor. But I do not think I fully understood, at first, how much history was waiting inside the story.

Ezekiel Proctor was born on the Fourth of July into a nation being erased. He survived the Trail of Tears, served as a Union veteran, lived as a man caught between two worlds and two legal systems, and eventually became a Senator and Deputy U.S. Marshal. His life is connected to the Goingsnake tragedy of 1872, one of the deadliest events in the history of the U.S. Marshals.

But what surprised me most was not just the history itself.

It was the way my mother brings the story forward.

Jerra Rose does not simply hand readers a list of facts. She takes you into the journey.

From the pages I have had the privilege to read, she does not treat him like a flat figure from the past. She approaches him as a man carrying history in his body — grief, anger, memory, loyalty, identity, and the ache of trying to find his way back to himself.

The past does not sit quietly behind him. It follows him. It lives in family, memory, community, and the difficult choices placed before a man caught between worlds.

Maybe that is part of why the story lands the way it does right now. We are not standing in the same history, and I would never pretend modern discomfort compares to what the Cherokee people endured. But many of us do understand what it feels like to live in a country pulling against itself, where questions of law, loyalty, identity, truth, and belonging still shape the world around us.

That is what surprised me most.

The book does not flatten him into a historical figure.

It lets him be human.

This is not just a story about one man.

It is a story about survival.

About identity.

About law and power.

About the Cherokee Nation.

About family.

About what happens when a people are forced to keep fighting for their soul while the world around them keeps trying to rewrite, erase, or claim authority over their lives.

And then there is the part that feels almost too meaningful to ignore.

My mother wrote this book because she had promised her father she would. The spark came from my Grandpa Rose and his family story, but the pride in that history did not stop with him.

My Little Grandma Rose was not Native herself, but she carried deep pride in our Cherokee heritage. She lived on the reservation for a short time during her early marriage years with my grandpa, and whatever she absorbed from that season of life mattered to her. It mattered enough that she carried it forward.

To her children.

To her grandchildren.

Into the stories we inherited.

That history was never treated like something distant or decorative. It was part of the family story. Part of the memory. Part of the way pride, identity, and belonging moved through generations.

And somehow, without planning it, two creative journeys in our family converged around her memory in a way that still feels surreal.

I finished my own book, Sliver, on Little Grandma Rose’s birthday.

My mother finished the book she promised her father she would write on Little Grandma Rose’s death day.

Neither of us realized the significance of those dates until after the work was done.

That is the kind of coincidence that does not feel loud.

It feels quiet.

Sacred, almost.

Like a thread you only notice after you have already followed it.

That moment reminded me how differently we all carry inheritance. My mother carried hers through history, research, and storytelling. Mine came through reflection, perception, and meaning. Different books. Different journeys. Different expressions.

But somehow, both touched the memory of the same woman.

Back in 2023, I wrote about this manuscript when it was still in progress. I wrote then about reading my mother’s work, about our family connection to Zeke Proctor, and about how the story opened a door into a piece of history I was still learning to understand.

Now that door is opening wider.

The manuscript I once wrote about is becoming a published book.

That is the surprise.

Not because I doubted her.

Never that.

But because there is something deeply moving about watching an idea, a family story, a historical figure, a promise, and years of work finally become something readers can hold, order, read, and share.

So, what book completely surprised me?

The one my mother wrote.

The one that taught me more about our history.

The one that reminded me that family stories are not small just because they begin close to home.

The one that proves history is not only something we study.

Sometimes, history is something we inherit.

Sometimes, it is something we have to sit with.

And sometimes, if we are lucky, someone we love is brave enough to write it down.

Zeke of Goingsnake: Based on the Life and Times of Ezekiel Proctor by Jerra Rose is available now for preorder and releases May 15.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I am proud of you, and I cannot think of a better way to celebrate you than helping others discover the story you worked so hard to bring into the world.