The pioneer-girl genre assumes a French Canadian flavor in this story of a 15-year-old girl’s journey of self-discovery as she travels west through the wilderness of 1703. Cécile Chesne abhors Québec’s stifling walls where Grandmère expects her to behave like a proper French lady. One day she sees a mistreated Pawnee indien slave and defiantly buys and frees him. In gratitude, Lesharo travels with Cécile and her father to fur-trading mecca Fort Détroit. Cécile creates a stir by treating Lesharo as her equal and donning moccasins, loose shirts, and braids instead of high heels, corsets, and coiffed hair. When a handsome soldier courts Cécile, Lesharo is torn between his attachment to her and returning to his own People of the Wolf. As their friendship triggers conflict between white invaders and native indiens, Cécile and Lesharo realize they are much more than brother and sister to the wolf that thematically and literally tracks them. In the fiery climax, Cécile decides between her “brother or his life.” Engrossing historical adventure featuring a memorable feminist heroine. (maps, author’s note) (Historical fiction. YA)
