Edmonds has written no novel since Chad Hanna. Actually, this is scarcely a novel, but rather an episodic handling of the aftermath of an Indian raid on a town in New York around 1778. Step by step the reader follows the events as they affected the women taken captive. There's the long trek while the group held together; the break as one man captive escaped; the division, some going one way, some another. Four main threads are followed to their ends, and with the treaty which gave prisoners freedom, most of them made their way back to white settlements. Mainly it is the story of Delia, bride of a month, of how she was adopted into an Indian household, married to an Indian chieftain, and how she bore his child. And finally of her return to John, her husband. In the course of her story, and those of the others, both women and children, their Indian captors take on personality, individuality- and the ways of an American theme, but not a major work. S.E.P.