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Pages: 108
Goes well with: home-baked cookies instead of hardtack biscuits; fresh-brewed coffee instead of brackish water
In Georgia in 1938, Sophia Deveraux is living a nightmare. The cruelty of the evil Major Todd has trapped her in the company of Cherokee tribespeople awaiting deportation. Old Martin befriends her, but her broken fate seems without hope, mirroring that of the Cherokee lands. In a world where women are considered inferior and Native American even more so, Sophia hones her tomboy skills, tries to make a difference, and guards her only remaining tie with home and family, a strange ragged doll.
Clay, a Choctaw Indian whose family died in the care of soldiers as they were taken from their land, finds his emotions veering between the need to save lives, the longing for revenge, and the dawning of love on a long cold winter’s march.
Author Heidi Vanlandingham depicts the world of semi-assimilated Native Americans beautifully in her Scrimshaw Doll novella, Trail of Hope. Young men have studied and grown wise in the ways of both worlds, but the color of their skin leaves them open to betrayal. Meanwhile, young white men sign up for an honorable military occupation and find their lives occupied with dishonor and pain. And a white girl who grew up with slaves as her best friends now has no one to turn to but those who are treated as less than slaves.
Come spring, the land will awaken, as will love and the long-sealed casket of Sophie’s dreams. The scrimshaw doll plays a minor role, while good conquers evil in a novella that’s by turns bleak and beautiful, savagely damning and filled with hope—an evocative, fast-action adventure with just the right touch of promise, spirit and romance.
