The Green Corn

Abe Baxter isn't sure about this rebellion business. Sure, he's fed up with social and economic inequality, the war, and especially the draft, but mostly he and Lila want to work their farm and protect their son Ike. Ike cajoles his reluctant father into joining him in the secretive Working Class Union, which lands them both in the middle of the very real Green Corn Rebellion..

Based on actual events in the summer of 1917 when the Green Corn Rebellion shook Oklahoma, The Green Corn follows Abe Baxter and his family into potentially deadly conflict with Seminole County Sheriff Floyd Jackson, a man they generally like and admire.

On a farm near Sasakwa, Abe and Lila Baxter proudly work their own land, managing to meet their mortgage payments, so far anyway. But when the country enters a war President Wilson had promised to keep them out of, kitchen table talk turns to anger and, for some, rebellion.

Meanwhile in Wewoka, Sheriff Jackson labors to keep his constituents' dissatisfaction from escalating into bloodshed. His is a thankless task; every outburst he manages to quell, two more flare up. Though most of the characters in this story are imagined, the unrest, the W.C.U., and The Green Corn Rebellion happened. The tone, if not every detail, of "the law's" response is real.