The ten stories that make up this collection are raw, original, and fresh. Although they are all about American Indians, they are as different from one another as they are from anything you've read before. A supermarket checkout line, a rowboat on a freezing lake at dawn, a drunken dance in the gym, an ice hockey game on public-access TV. These are some of the backgrounds against which ten outstanding authors have created their memorable characters. Their work -- both poignant and funny, sarcastic and serious -- reminds us that the American Indian story is far from over -- it's being written every day.

The ten stories that make up this collection are raw, original, and fresh. Although they are all about American Indians, they are as different from one another as they are from anything you've read before. A supermarket checkout line, a rowboat on a freezing lake at dawn, a drunken dance in the gym, an ice hockey game on public-access TV. These are some of the backgrounds against which ten outstanding authors have created their memorable characters. Their work -- both poignant and funny, sarcastic and serious -- reminds us that the American Indian story is far from over -- it's being written every day.

Mixed-heritage people are one of the fastest-growing groups in the United States, yet culturally they have been largely invisible, especially in young adult literature. Mixed Heritage in Young Adult Literature is a critical exploration of how mixed-heritage characters (those of mixed race, ethnicity, religion, and/or adoption) and real-life people have been portrayed in young adult fiction and nonfiction. This is the first in-depth, broad-scope critical exploration of this subgenre of multicultural literature. Following an introduction to the topic, author Nancy Thalia Reynolds examines the portrayal of mixed-heritage characters in literary classics by James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain, and Zora Neale Hurston—staples of today's high school English curriculum—along with other important authors. It opens up the discussion of young-adult racial and ethnic identity in literature to recognize—and focus on—those whose heritage straddles boundaries. In this book teachers will find new tools to approach race, ethnicity, and family heritage in literature and in the classroom. This book also helps librarians find new criteria with which to evaluate young adult fiction and nonfiction with mixed-heritage characters.

August 1863 finds two con artists traveling with their embezzled cash to build their dream ranch in Washington Territory. But some Cheyenne Indians have different plans for those white settlers heading west, plans that cause the story of our con artists to become three stories. Chief of Thieves, the sequel to Kohlhagen’s Where They Bury You, takes the reader into the disasters of early Western ranch life and the births of lawless Wyoming towns; inside Cheyenne villages and tipis, where this hunting civilization of people, called “the greatest horsemen and cavalry the world ever saw,” lived, raided, and were attacked and massacred as they slept; and into the relentlessly driven lives, internal conflicts, and battles of George Armstrong Custer and his Seventh Cavalry. The three stories interweave at an ever-quickening pace, from Colorado negotiations to battles in Oregon, Wyoming. Kansas, and what is now Montana, including the massacres at Sand Creek and the Washita River, before culminating on a beautiful June 1876 day on the Little Bighorn River. Custer’s Little Bighorn decisions under fire in real time become understandable on these pages as death comes to historical and fictional characters, con artists, U.S. soldiers, and Cheyenne alike, and the three stories merge climactically on that fateful day in American history. Chief of Thieves is based on the factual story of how Lieutenant Augustyn P. Damours conned the U.S. Army, the Catholic Church, and the New Mexico Territory out of millions of today’s dollars.

In the fall of 1877, Nez Perce (Nimiipuu) Indians were desperately fleeing U.S. Army troops. After a 1,700-mile journey across Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana, the Nez Perces headed for the Canadian border, hoping to find refuge in the land of the White Mother, Queen Victoria. But the army caught up with them at the Bear’s Paw Mountains in northern Montana, and following a devastating battle, Chief Joseph and most of his people surrendered. The wrenching tale of Chief Joseph and his followers is now legendary, but Bear’s Paw is not the entire story. In fact, nearly three hundred Nez Perces escaped the U.S. Army and fled into Canada. Beyond Bear’s Paw is the first book to explore the fate of these “nontreaty” Indians. Drawing on hitherto unexplored Canadian and U.S. sources, including reminiscences of Nez Perce participants, Jerome A. Greene presents an epic story of human endurance under duress. Greene vividly describes the tortuous journey of the small band who managed to elude Colonel Nelson A. Miles’s command. After the escapees crossed the “Medicine Line” into the British Possessions, they found only new trauma. Within a few years, most of them stole back to their homelands in Idaho Territory. Those who remained north of the line faced a difficult and uncertain future. In recent years, Nimiipuu descendants from the United States and Canada have revisited their common past and sought reconciliation. Beyond Bear’s Paw offers new perspectives on the Nez Perces’ struggle for freedom, their hapless rejection, and their ultimate cultural renewal.