Mail Order Bride: Loving My Indian Captor


Emma Morgan - 2019
    She is a skilled nurse, but jobs are few and far between now. So, at the advice of an old friend, she accepts an offer as a mail order bride, and soon she is headed west for her new life. However, her plans are shattered when a tornado rips her stagecoach apart, leaving her stranded on the prairie. Now, Marie finds herself held captive by a group of Indians in need of her healing skills. Her only friend is Chayton, a member of the tribe who takes her under his protection. And slowly, their hearts begin to open to each other. But when one of Marie’s patients nears death, the tribe demands a task that not even Chayton can protect her from.

Lark's Song (Sheppard's Sisters Book 1)


Lola Grace Stevens - 2016
    Unwilling to return to her family in Texas and be a burden to them or accept her landlords proposition to become his mistress, she is forced to leave her home. Selling her body isn’t an option, finding a new husband is her only acceptable choice. Raven O’Neil, a half-breed, lost his inheritance – his father’s farm – to his half-sister and her lawyer husband. He’d spent years drifting until found work and a home at the Garrison Saloon in Caruthers, Colorado. His peace is shattered when he receives a letter from his sister, requesting his return to the farm in Iowa. The last time he’d been in touch with his sister he lied and told her he was married, and now he must find a wife. Making a lie come true was his plan. Security for her and her children was hers. Falling in love wasn’t in the equation. As Lark and Raven struggle to build their new life together, a man from Raven’s past returns and threatens to destroy everything.

Dyed in the Wool


Joyce Lekas - 2012
    Environmental issues are central, as is the Navajo way of life, and weaving. When Annie McLeod's car is rammed and shoved into a ditch in the dead of night, she knows that something criminal is afoot on the Navajo reservation. She and her stepsons are injured in the crash, the latest in a string of problems. First, an experimental testing device showed toxins in reservation stream water; then Navajo weavers confided they believed something was wrong with their wool. Scientists solve problems, and Annie, a chemist, is determined to uncover the threats facing the Navajo people. From the analytical lab where she works in Phoenix, to the craggy mountains and remote canyons of the vast reservation, Annie's quest uncovers a deadly business, where the stakes keep rising and not everyone comes out alive.

The Quest of the Fish-Dog Skin


James Willard Schultz - 1913
    These two set forth from the lodges of the Blackfeet, in company with an older Indian who acts as their guide, philosopher, and friend, on a far quest to the salt water to find the medicine-animal that is called "fish-dog" because it lives only in the water, swimming like a fish, yet has the face of a dog and barks like a dog. One of the boys, being of white parentage, knew from books in the little library at home that this strange animal, which we recognize at once as some sort of a seal, frequented the waters of the Pacific Ocean and adjacent rivers. This boy was, in fact, J. W. Schultz, whose first book, "My Life as an Indian," was published some years ago. As a boy and young man he lived with the Indians on the upper Missouri in the days before the white man had penetrated the far West, and his writings about the Indians are based upon an intimate knowledge of their native life.

Lone Eagle


Alfred Dennis - 2008
    William and his sister Virginia are found by a passing army patrol but Phillip is missing. Eighteen years later at the Fort Laramie Treaty Council a close family friend sees a warrior identical in looks to William. Follow the Lane's west as a courageous family seeks the missing twin, Phillip.

A Red Son Rises in the West


John Deakins - 2019
    His newfound Christianity is shaken by the loss of his master and a life-threatening injury. Following after his Mennonite friends, he goes to the time-displaced American town of Grantville and is overwhelmed by culture shock. He decides to return to the New World as a missionary. Only half a dozen warring powers and thousands of miles of ocean can block him, until he’s almost stopped by an unexpected event; love. A storm, a baby, a near-shipwreck, and a timely rescue finally see him back in his homeland. Now, all he has to do is to reach for his dreams.

Timothy Findley's the Wars


Dennis Garnhum - 2008
    Ross, who has a fondness for animals and shares a strong bond with his wheelchair-bound sister, trades his comfortable surroundings in Canada for the nightmare world of trench warfare. We watch Ross's slow unravelling as he moves from home to train to barracks and, finally, to the mud, smoke, and chlorine gas of the front line in France. With death and dying everywhere around him, Ross makes a desperate attempt to show his faith in life. Cruelty, heroism, terror and honour--"The Wars" takes us deep inside the mind of a soldier and straight onto the bloody battlefield. "The Wars" is one of Canada's most beloved novels, winner of the Governor General's Award for Fiction in 1977. This adaptation evokes the spirit, imagery, and heart of the novel, and adds the immediacy of the theatrical form.

The Capture and Escape: Life Among the Sioux (1870)


Sarah Luse Larimer - 2012
     When her wagon train was 8 miles from Fort Laramie, Wyoming, a Sioux Oglalas war party, in war-paint, suddenly appeared and began to encircle their wagons, pretending to be most friendly and asking for presents. The Indians urged the emigrants on, and offered to accompany them, so that they pushed on in company for a short time, until it was saw that they were approaching a ravine where his party would be at a disadvantage, and he insisted on camping outside of it. The Indians, after some hesitation, agreed, and the travellers began to make preparations for supper, when suddenly the Indians fired a volley at them. Some of those who escaped the attack succeeded in hiding in the brushwood, but Mrs. Kelly and her adopted daughter, Mary, as well as Mrs. Larimer and her children, became the prisoners of the Indians. After the second night of capture, Larimer and her son Frank managed to escape and were later reunited with her husband at Camp Collins, Colorado Territory. Larimer wrote of her harrowing captivity and escape in her 1871 book "The Capture and Escape: Life Among the Sioux." In describing dangers encountered during their escape from the Indians, Larimer noted: "The horrors of our situation were harassing to contemplate. The wolves seemed congregated upon the highlands, and, awaking from their night’s repose, their wailing cries echoed back from the distant hills with terrific clearness. These prowling creatures abound in that country, where some species attain a great size. Even the buffalo, which does not fear them in the herd, knows his danger when overtaken alone; and the solitary bull, secreted from its hunter, succumbs before the united force of a gang of wolves." Sarah Luse Larimer (1836-1913) was born in Pennsylvania, headed west in 1859 with her husband, living for a while in Allen County, Kansas, where she operated a photographic gallery. In 1864, along with her husband and son the family set out for the mines of Idaho Territory, when their plans were disrupted by Oglalas on the warpath. John Bratt in his 1921 book "Trails of Yesterday" writes of Larimer: "At Sherman Station I became well acquainted with Mrs. Larimer and her son, who kept a general store there, bought and sold ties and cord wood, while her husband had a star route mail contract from Point of Rocks north. There was also a Mrs. Kelly living near the station. These two women and Mrs. Larimer's son had been captured by the Sioux Indians near Fort Laramie. Mrs. Larimer and her son, after two weeks' captivity in the lodge of the chief, stole away one night and though the Indians hunted them day and night, they succeeded in eluding them and got back to the fort, after suffering unmentionable cruelties. Mrs. Kelly, not so fortunate, was taken by the Indians up on the Missouri River and kept with the band over six months." In describing the moment of rescue by a passing wagon train, Larimer writes that "as we sat in this shelter, which proved to be the last, a most joyful and welcome sound greeted our ears —one in which there was no mistake—our own language, spoken by some boys who passed, driving cattle."

The Fat of The Land


R. Allen Chappell - 2012
    While some of these narratives are loosely based in fact, they are written with a large dollop of literary license. The characters are not "politically correct" in today's parlance and speak in the vernacular of their time and culture. Some of them you will like ...others you may not. No disrespect or offense is intended in the telling. These are their stories.The lead story "Fat of The Land" was a past runner-up in the national Raymond Carver short story awards.

Walking on the Land


Farley Mowat - 2000
    In Walking on the Land, he returns to write about the Arctic for the first time in two decades. Using a seminal trip he took through the eastern Arctic as his starting point, Mowat interweaves the stories and the fate of the Barrenground Inuit who were his friends with stunning, lyrical description of the land that was their traditional homeland. With great beauty and terrible anguish, Mowat traces the history of the Barrenground Inuit, revealing how the decimation of the caribou herds in the early part of the century, unleashed a series of famines and epidemics that virtually wiped out their population and left them reliant on a far-away government that understood too little of their needs and circumstances. Through his continued friendship with the survivors, Mowat brings us into the present, showing how the remnant population has survived. No Mowat work is complete without a cast of larger-than-life characters and his trademark marvellous storytelling. Walking on the Land is no exception. Old-time Hudson`s Bay company men, eccentric priests, wild bush pilots and well-meaning interlopers people the pages, bringing to life one of Canada`s most haunted places.

Keeping Heart on Pine Ridge: Family Ties, Warrior Culture, Commodity Foods, Rez Dogs, and the Sacred


Vic Glover - 2004
    Together, with humor and perseverance, they are strengthened as they try to overcome the social and political forces that threaten their community. Native and non-native alike will find a poignant honesty that grabs them from the opening line to the end. For some it will feel like familiar territory; for others, a heart-opening awakening to the struggles and spirit of The People.

Crossing Into Medicine Country: A Journey In Native American Healing


David Carson - 2005
    Through her teachings and his own mind-bending experiences, he gives us a glimpse into an alternate reality.

Someday


Drew Hayden Taylor - 1993
    The story in Someday, though told through fictional characters and full of Taylor's distinctive wit and humour, is based on the real-life tragedies suffered by many Native Canadian families.Anne Wabung's daughter was taken away by children's aid workers when the girl was only a toddler. It is Christmastime 35 years later, and Anne's yearning to see her now-grown daughter is stronger than ever.When the family is finally reunited, however, the dreams of neither women are fulfilled.The setting for the play is a fictional Ojibway community, but could be any reserve in Canada, where thousands of Native children were removed from their families in what is known among Native people as the "scoop-up" of the 1950s and 1960s. Somedayis an entertaining, humourous, and spirited play that packs an intense emotional wallop.Reviews: "One of the 50 Essential Canadian Plays"-- Toronto Star

Peyote Spirits: A Novella


Ron Schwab - 2018
    Army and the Comanche has ceased . . . but learning to live together spawns a whole new set of battles. A thrilling ride is set in motion when a sergeant’s wife is murdered at Fort Sill and Broken Wing, a young Comanche brave, is found at the murder scene, dazed and chanting. Comanche Chief Quanah Parker, fighting the U.S. government over his tribe’s refusal to adopt the white man’s laws and forsake polygamy and the use of peyote, requests his lawyers, Jael and Josh Rivers, to represent the young brave. As the Rivers duo begins investigating the murder, it quickly becomes clear there is no open and shut case against Broken Wing.

Fateful Destiny: An Epic Struggle to Change the Course of American History


Marshall Anders - 2021
    His success and good fortune at such a young age was a remarkable accomplishment for someone from a small Central California farm town. Everything was coming together for Axel until a devastating tragedy beset his hometown. Axel’s perfect life was thrown into turmoil, exposing the moral compromises that he had made to achieve success. In his struggle to put the pieces of his life back together, he discovered his true purpose. From the depths of tragedy, Axel embarked on a quest to revitalize his people and restore the American Nation.