Too young to avert danger, Mattie McAlister - an eleven-year-old runaway slave and Black- walked alone to Oregon, hiding in daylight and walking in darkness. One rainy night, she bumped into Black Saul and feared he would abuse her like her half-brothers had. A moment later, her peril intensified as horse riders brandishing leather whips approached and stopped ten feet away. Overwhelmed with dread of a lashing, Mattie and Black Saul dropped to the ground to hide. But this was only the first of her many encounters with danger. A week later, she was left with scars across her back when she lived through a bear attack. And years later, on a trip to Celilo Falls with Joe Meek and Margaret J. Bailey, she walked away from a Cayuse kidnaper with a trophy of a feathered necklace and a digit from her attacker's finger.
Amid the historical events - Rogue River War, and Mexican War; the exodus of Oregonians to gold mines; the slaughter of missionaries in the Whitman Mission Massacre, and the making of Beaver Coins - Mattie fell in love with Albert Bayless. Unbeknownst to the guests at their engagement party, Mattie went to check on a sleeping baby. While everyone danced the Virginia Reel - POOF - Mattie disappeared.
For decades, no one could solve the mystery of what happened to her though the solution was tucked in the back of a drawer. Then one day, Albert Bayless opened the drawer and the knowledge of Mattie's fate tumbled onto the pages of this book, Unbeknownst.