Authors of “The Big Divide” will be in the Hays Public Library Gallery at 2:00pm on Sunday, June 16 to discuss their book.

For the past 16 years, Diane Eickhoff and Aaron Barnhart have been driving back and forth across one of the least visible and most contentious borders in American history: the Missouri-Kansas state line.

This boundary — this line in the dirt — once produced the fierce border wars that gave the world John Brown, Jesse James, William Clarke Quantrill and Ride With the Devil. But it also produced Harry Truman, Amelia Earhart, George Washington Carver, and three world-famous painters whose works could not have happened anywhere else.

The Civil War was fought here in the West before it was won in the East. The battles at Wilson’s Creek and Pea Ridge were crucial to keeping Missouri in the Union. History was made right here, by African American regiments who were seeing combat for the first time in the Civil War (long before the 54th Massachusetts of Glory renown).

Now it’s your turn to discover this remarkable landscape. The Big Divide will take you to the most compelling and unique sites where history happened along this turbulent border. Diane and Aaron — she’s a historian, he’s a journalist — can tell you why these sites mattered and make it easy for you to put together a themed driving tour to your tastes. If you’ve got kids, they’ve got you covered, too.