Winner of the North American Book Award for Best Historical Fiction "An elegiac, hopeful historical novel... hypnotic." -Kirkus Reviews "An extraordinary new historical novel." -Akron Beacon Journal On a humid day in June 1806, on the edge of Ohio's Great Black Swamp, seventeen-year-old Susanna Quiner watches from behind a maple tree as a band of Potawatomi Indians kidnaps her four older sisters from their cabin. With both her parents dead from Swamp Fever and all the other settlers out in their fields, Susanna makes the rash decision to pursue them herself. What follows is a young woman's quest to find her sisters, and the parallel story of her sisters' new lives. Over the course of one summer, the lives of all five women are transformed as they contend with starvation, slavery, betrayal, and love. Fast-paced, richly detailed, this is a riveting novel that demonstrates the true wildness of the wilderness, and the rugged perseverance of those who find themselves there.
Author
Martha Conway's latest novel is THE PHYSICIAN'S DAUGHTER. Her other novels include The Underground River (Simon & Schuster), which was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, and Thieving Forest, which won the North American Book Award for Best Historical Fiction. Her short fiction has been published in the Iowa Review, the Carolina Quarterly, The Quarterly, Folio, Massachusetts Review, and other journals. She teaches creative writing at Stanford University's Continuing Studies Program. Martha is one of seven sisters and now lives in San Francisco with her family.
