"... Make no mistake about it: This is frontier fiction at its finest and most compelling—characters that yank you into their lives at this most crucial time in the history not only of this hemisphere, but in the making of the New World.

To my way of thinking, if Calling Crow is an indication of what is this new writer's raw power, Paul Clayton should be around for a long, long time, spinning his mystifying, heart-wrenching tales that undeniably have the gut of truth to them, the smell of ancient fires, as well as the tingle of an awakening world."

—Terry C. Johnston, author of Carry the Wind.

1555. Calling Crow is haunted by his recurring dream of the Destroyer who will one day lay waste to his village. Then Spanish colonial slavers from the island of Hispaniola arrive on the shores of the Southeast, lands that have been home to the Muskogee people for generations. Calling Crow and another brave are taken and bound into slavery. Life in the gold pits and slave camps is humiliating and brutal, but Calling Crow refuses to let them break his spirit. Aided by a kindly Spanish priest, Calling Crow vows to learn the language and ways of an overwhelmingly powerful enemy in order to eventually save his own people. But first he must regain his own freedom.