Description: Mary Ingles was twenty-three, happily married, and pregnant with her third child when Shawnee Indians invaded her peaceful Virginia settlement in 1755 and kidnapped her, leaving behind a bloody massacre. For months they held her captive. But nothing could imprison her spirit. With the rushing Ohio River as her guide, Mary Ingles walked one thousand miles through an untamed wilderness no white woman had ever seen. Her story lives on--extraordinary testimony to the indomitable strength of one pioneer woman who risked her life to return to her own people.
Brief description: James Alexander Thom was a U.S. Marine, a newspaper and magazine editor, and a member of the faculty at the Indiana University Journalism School. He is the acclaimed author of Long Knife, From Sea to Shining Sea, The Children of First Man, The Red Heart, Sign-Talker, and Panther in the Sky, for which he won the prestigious Western Writers of America Spur Award for Best Historical Novel. He lives in the Indiana hill country near Bloomington with his wife, Dark Rain, of the Shawnee Nation, United Remnant Band.