Ghost of Canola Creek: Book Four (Legacy in the Dust Series (6) Books 4)

Some ghosts rattle chains. Others hum lullabies beneath cottonwoods.

At Canola Creek Ranch, silence has never meant peace. It’s where memories linger in the fields, where boots echo long after footsteps fade, and where every broken fence post seems to remember a story no one dares to retell. Ghost of Canola Creek picks up the McGraw family legacy with a new home, new healing—and old haunts that refuse to stay buried.

Ben McGraw thought he had outrun his past. With a 12-bedroom house rising from the land and the ranch thriving with 75 Appaloosa horses and over 3,000 head of Black Angus cattle, it looks like everything he ever wanted is finally within reach. But under the surface of progress, something older stirs—something that won’t be forgotten just because the walls are new.

Stetson, the quiet artist of the family, begins sketching figures he’s never seen—until Adelene finds them in a box of old family photographs. Kathy, still recovering from her accident, claims a woman watches her from the edge of the creek, always silent, always signing. And in the unfinished room of the new house, cold drafts and old songs slip through even the tightest boards.

Adelene knows the signs. She’s heard them before—in dreams, in silence, and in songs unsung. The McGraw’s aren’t just building a house; they’re awakening something in the soil. Something that wants to be remembered. Something that may not rest until it is.

While Ben wrestles with the ghost of his father’s temper, Abbie tries to keep the home together with recipes passed down from generations of women who healed with food, not words. Linda returns from the sheep pastures with herbs, stories, and wild wisdom, while Stephen rediscovers Doug’s old guitar—and the grief that still sings in its strings.

Music returns to the barn like an answered prayer. Sammie builds a stage from salvaged wood and stubborn hope. Stetson composes a wordless melody that no one can forget. Adelene, still reluctant to sing, finds herself humming again in the quiet hours. Together, they create more than a performance—they create a reckoning.

But not every ghost is malevolent. Some come to warn. Some come to bless. And some come simply to be heard one last time. When the family gathers for a moonlit feast, setting places for both the living and the lost, the veil between worlds grows thin—and the truth comes pouring through.

As branding season arrives and the ranch bustles with life, the McGraw’s find themselves drawn into a deeper understanding of their inheritance—not just of land and blood, but of silence, survival, and song. The cold room, the whispering creek, the scent of lilacs in a windowless hallway… every sign points toward one truth: some stories don’t die. They wait.

Ghost of Canola Creek is a novel of restoration—of memory, music, and the spaces between grief and grace. It’s about the cost of burying what should’ve been spoken, and the healing that happens when a family decides to listen—to the land, to each other, and to the ghosts who never truly left.

For readers who believe in the sacredness of stories, the power of old songs, and the weight of what goes unsaid, Trudy Myrland’s fourth novel in The Legacy in the Dust Series offers a rich, emotional journey into the heart of a family that refuses to be broken.