The Red Heart: A Novel [Paperback]

The Slocum family of Northeastern Pennsylvania are the best of the white settlers, peace-loving Quakers who believe that the Indians hold the Light of God inside. It is from this good-hearted family that Frances is abducted during the Revolutionary war.

As the child's terror subsides, she is slowly drawn into the sacred work and beliefs of her adoptive mother and of all the women of these Eastern tribes. Frances becomes Maconakwa, the Little Bear Woman of the Miami Indians. Then, long after the Indians are beaten and their last hope, Tecumseh, is killed, the Slocums hear word of their long-lost daughter and head out to Indiana to meet their beloved Frances. But for Maconakwa, it is a moment of truth, the test of whether her heart is truly a red one.James Alexander Thom lives in the Indiana hill country near Bloomington with his wife, Dark Rain of the Shawnee Nation, United Remnant Band. He has been a U.S. Marine, a newspaper and magazine editor, and a member of the faculty at the Indiana University Journalism School. Thom is the author of Follow the River, Long Knife, From Sea to Shining Sea, Panther in the Sky, for which he won the prestigious Western Writers of America Spur award for best historical novel, and The Children of First Man.CHAPTER ONE
 
November 1778
Valley of the Susquehanna, Pennsylvania
 
A gunshot and one angry shout sounded from outdoors, startling Frances from her daydream. The little girl glanced up from the glowing hearth embers to see whether her mother was alarmed. All of Ruth Slocum’s children had learned to read the face of their mother, who feared little.
 
But Frances realized that her mother was not in the room. She must have carried the baby upstairs or out into the gray afternoon. Frances saw no one here but her lame brother Ebenezer and the took-in boy Wareham Kingsley; they both were standing stock-still by the staircase, mouths open, eyes boggling. Then Wareham Kingsley crouched and lĂ`