In the summer of 1916, times were tough in the Cherokee Nation which many were now beginning to call Oklahoma. The Adair children had it no easier nor more difficult than others. Their father was marginally prosperous, their mother kind. At nearly eighteen, Shanna was a dreamer who yearned for a future of bright lights and elegant men, of which there were few in the Nation. Tom, at seventeen, was tangled in his first love, reckless and eager for adventure. Elizabeth, the youngest, was studious and sincere in wanting to advance herself and the Indians around her. So it was that Shanna found herself in that year slipping away from her home and running off to the young town of Hollywood, California, searching for all that is golden. The darker clouds of Europe were now shadowing the Nation and Tom found himself traveling to the far land of France to participate in the white man's war. And Elizabeth's time had come to try to fight back at inequities in the legal system which still oppressed the Cherokee people.