What follows is a story of attempted rescue, of severe and forced adaptation, and of redemption or lack thereof. And this story did not fail to deliver exactly what I was looking for.Ī gaggle of recently orphaned women are taken all secret-like by a bunch of natives. Tribes of natives, living off the land, seeing the promise of 'Murrica paying off, or tasting it sour in one's mouth: all that speaks to me. I love me some old-timey, pioneer-type stories. It paints a fascinating new picture of pioneer life among Native American communities, while telling a gripping tale of survival. Together they canoe through the Black Swamp and into enemy territory looking for Susanna, and while they travel Koman teaches Seth about their shared heritage.įast-paced and richly detailed, Thieving Forest explores the transformation of all five sisters as the Quiners contend with starvation, slavery, betrayal, and love. He allies himself with a Potawatomi named Koman, one of the band of men who originally abducted the Quiner sisters, but who now wishes to make his own retribution. Part Potawatomi himself but living a white man’s life, Seth unwittingly sets off on his own quest to reclaim his birthright. The man who loves her, Seth Spendlove, is in pursuit after he realizes that his father was involved in the kidnapping. Over the next five months, Susanna tans hides in a Moravian missionary village escapes down a river with a young native girl discovers an eccentric white woman raising chickens in the middle of the Great Black Swamp and becomes a servant in a Wyandot village longhouse. What follows is a young woman's quest to save her sisters and the parallel story of her sisters' new lives. With both her parents dead from Swamp Fever and all the other settlers out in their fields, Susanna rashly decides to pursue them herself.

On a humid morning in 1806, seventeen-year-old Susanna Quiner watches helplessly from behind a tree while a band of Potawatomi Indians kidnaps her four older sisters from their cabin.

Thieving forest by martha conway