Description

Hailed as "the finest depiction of the infamous Trail of Tears," this unflinching novel sheds light on a tragic history (Pat Conroy).

As the tribes of the South make the grueling journey across the Mississippi River, a trio of disparate characters is united by a "far-reaching story of love, courage, and honor" (Booklist).

Greensborough, North Carolina, 1828. Abrahan Bento Sassaporta Naggar has traveled to America from the filthy streets of East London in search of a better life. But Abe's visions of a privileged apprenticeship in the Sassaporta Brothers' empire are soon replaced with the grim reality of indentured servitude.

Some fifty miles west, Dark Water of the Mountains, the daughter of a powerful Cherokee chief, leads a life of irreverent solitude. Twenty years ago, she renounced her family's plans for her to marry a wealthy white man--a decision that soon proves fateful.

And in Georgia, a black slave named Jacob has resigned himself to a life of loss and injustice in a Cherokee city of refuge for criminals.

From the author of Marching to Zion and One More River comes a sweeping novel of American history. As their stories converge in the shameful machinations of history, three outsiders will bear witness to the horrors known as Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal Act--just as they also discover the possibility for hope. See why Library Journal raves, "This absorbing and vivid portrait of 19th-century America will attract serious historical fiction fans."