It is an historical-adventure set in colonial
America. The two primary characters progress through
a sequence of events involving real people and
historical facts. This creates a vivid portrayal of
life, sometimes quiet and serene, sometimes violent
and deadly, on the expanding frontier.
Richard came to the New World as a boy when his
blacksmith father fled England to keep his family
from being repeatedly harassed and intimated by
drunken, overbearing, upper-class gentry. In
Virginia, Richard helped his father develop a
thriving farm which they hacked from the wilderness.
After the death of his mother and sister, and against
the wishes of his father, he joined a ragtag work
crew assigned to rebuild the Braddock Road between
Winchester and Fort Pitt. There he met a young
trapper, Flip Wade, whom he learned to admire and
respect. Together they decided to make their fortune
in the lucrative fur trade at the frontier outpost of
Detroit. On the way, they were forced to helplessly
attend the wedding of a teenage captive white girl to
a Seneca chief. (There is a statue honoring this Mary
Jemison in Letchworth State Park, New York) They also
save the life of a young Indian who had been captured
by a band of drunken, marauding Hurons and left to
die strung up between two saplings. This created a
bond with the young brave who was destined to become
the chief of a Wyandotte village.
The Wyandottes possessed lighter skin and finer
features than their Indian neighbors, characteristics
tribal lore indicated began several generations
before when a group of Norsemen wintered in their
village. These distinctions created an animosity with
other red men in the area who accused them of
wavering faithfulness to Indian causes because they
had been captivated by the white man's ways.
Richard returned to Virginia to marry Elizabeth
Harrington whom he had known most of his life. They
journeyed to Detroit and settled on an abandoned
French farm. A few years later they are caught in the
vortex of Pontiac's bloody uprising. The young
Wyandotte chief plays a key role in their survival.
