Jubal Sackett

Jubal Sackett is a western novel by Louis L'Amour, published in 1985 and part of his Sackett family stories. It follows the second generation of the family into country none of them has seen.

Jubal's urge to explore has already driven him westward, and the novel gives him a reason to go further. A Natchez priest asks him to take on a quest described as nearly impossible, which takes him out onto the endless grassy plains the Indians call the Far Seeing Lands.

The object of the search is a Natchez exploration party and its leader, Itchakomi. She is the person who will rule her people when their aging chief dies, and before that can happen she has to vanquish her rival, the arrogant warrior Kapata. The quest and the quarrel are not separate things.

The novel puts a Sackett in the middle of a succession dispute he has no part in, and it follows the quest through the danger it produces: an implacable enemy on one side and a woman worth dying for on the other.