Across the Sweet Grass Hills
 Gail L. Jenner
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 2001 Creative Arts Book Co.
  ISBN: 0887393020
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A historical romance set in the 1860s American West when settlers & native people collided.

The Blackfoot, a Plains Indian tribe consisting of three major bands: Bloods, Blackfoot & Piegans (Pikuni) occupied the country surrounding the Missouri River tributaries east of the Rocky Mountains. The Blackfoot were roamers, warring against other tribes. It has been estimated that they numbered 40-50 thousand souls.

In the early 1800s the Blackfoot accepted white missionaries into their camps & many adopted Christianity. Sometime around 1837, smallpox swept through the Plains People, killing as many as eight thousand.

After the American Civil War, Major General William T. Sherman, hero of Atlanta & the Great March, was given command of the Military Division of Mississippi/Missouri to administer the army's affairs over the entire Plains. His overriding goal became the extermination of the Indians in the West.

It is against this backdrop that a healer travels to his mother's camp, & a family follows the sun in their Prairie Schooner on their way to new hope & new land.

Then marauders attack in the night & the story of Red Eagle & Liza Ralston unfolds. Both survive. He to track the thieves & she to run for her life. Red Eagle finds her, & nurses her father back to life. She, true daughter of her minister father & of her culture’s phobias, is filled with repulsion & attraction, for he is one of them, an Indian, never to be trusted. Yet everything he does, everything he says is filled with sense, compassion & comfort.

& so their adventure begins as Red Eagle & Liza Ralston, horseless & with her wounded father, set out for a safer haven. On the Plains in that time, they were far & few between.

I'm not a huge fan of historical Western romances, however, Across the Sweet Grass Hills is much more than that, it is a glimpse into how our prejudices are nurtured, our paranoias inflamed, & a view from the other side of the looking glass at a time in our history that was both shameful & exciting.

Quite well done.

Across the Sweet Grass Hills won the 2002 WILLA award for Original Paperback Fiction, sponsored by Women Writing the West.

Also by Gail L. Jenner et al: Western Siskiyou County: Gold and Dreams (Making of America Series)
(02/23/03)

Rebecca