In 1886, a small band of Chiricahua Apaches, led by Geronimo, breaks out of the Fort Apache reservation and settles in Mexico's Sierra Madre, where they are safe from the US Army and free to raid the Mexicans for supplies and horses. Runs With Horses, 16, has trained for most of his life to become a warrior; in two more raids he will be able to choose a wife and join the warrior councils. But then Geronimo picks the teenager for a raid that results in their surrender to the Americans, who round up the Chiricahuas, imprison the men, and send the children to school in Pennsylvania to learn the way of whites. The story of government duplicity is sordid, but the real tale in this powerful and compelling historical novel is about striving mightily for a dream. Burks renders his first work for young adults in rugged prose, and his protagonist provides an admirable example of what the warrior ethos was all about. (map, bibliography) (Fiction. 12+)
