At the age of nine, Cynthia Ann Parker was captured in an Indian raid and taken to live as a slave with the Comanche. Twenty-four years later, she is the wife of a chief and the mother of a young warrior destined to become the great chief Quanah Parker. But in 1861 Cynthia Ann Parker and her infant daughter are recaptured, and returned against their will to a white settlement.

"A skillful examination of how individual identity is determined by cultural and social structures, and of what happens when these are drastically altered."—Kirkus Reviews