"This is anextraordinary and ground-breaking book, a wonderfully creative mix of fact andtheory, imagination and drama. Anyone with an interest in law, history, or, forthat matter, great storytelling will fall in love with A Death at Crooked Creek. The startling origin of the complex'intention exception' to the hearsay evidence rule becomes canvas on which agrand and marvelously detailed tale is told. This is modern narrative at itsbest: a marriage of spectacular writing and hard, documented truth presented bya brilliant author who doubles as a gifted and fastidious legal scholar andhistorian."—Andrew Popper,American UniversityOne winter night in1879, at a lonely Kansas campsite near Crooked Creek, a man was shot to death.The dead man’s traveling companion identified him as John Hillmon, a cowboyfrom Lawrence who had been attempting to carve out a life on the blusteryprairie. The case might have been soon forgotten and the apparent widow, SallieHillmon, left to mourn—except for the