"[This book] tells the stories of Justine--a mixed-blood Cherokee woman--and her daughter, Reney, as they move from Eastern Oklahoma's Indian Country in the hopes of starting a new, more stable life in Texas amid the oil bust of the 1980s. However, life in Texas isn't easy, and Reney feels unmoored from her family in Indian Country. Against the vivid backdrop of the Red River, we see their struggle to survive in a world--of unreliable men and near-Biblical...

"Eastern Oklahoma, 1928. Eighteen-year-old Maud Nail lives with her rogue father and sensitive brother on one of the allotments parceled out by the U.S. government to the Cherokees when their land was confiscated for Oklahoma's statehood. Maud's days are filled with hard work and simple pleasures, but often marked by violence and tragedy, a fact that she accepts with determined practicality. Her prospects for a better life are slim, but when a newcomer...

On December 29, 1835, members of the Cherokee Treaty Party agreed to give up their people's eastern lands in return for land in Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma), $5 million, and the cost of transporting their people west. Thus, in June 1838, the march west began.

Excited to go on his first family hunting trip, twelve-year-old Rodney learns Cherokee traditions, gun safety, and patience.