WALK ON

In Evenson’s YA historical novel, a Cherokee girl and a white boy become friends as the Cherokee Nation is pushed off their land by white settlers.

In 1838, Callie, a 14-year-old Cherokee girl, lives with her grandmother, Ama; her younger brother, Little Wolf; and her uncle, Waya, their tribe’s leader, in a Tennessee village called Rattlesnake Springs. One mile away, white settlers live in Fort Cass, including Jameson Miller, son of schoolteacher Katherine and Lt. Gen. Thomas Miller, the second-highest officer at the fort. When orders come from the U.S. government to remove the Cherokee people from their land, Waya tries in vain to negotiate. Gen. Miller disapproves of the order but feels powerless to stop it. Amid escalating racial tensions, Callie and Jameson (along with another boy, George) strike up an unlikely friendship. One morning, Callie’s world is shattered: While she is in the woods taking a constitutional, soldiers swarm the village, forcing her people to leave and not giving them enough time to gather their belongings—even killing people in their haste (“Wails floated into the late afternoon as the soldiers went about their methodical business”). Frightened and separated from her family, Callie is sheltered by Jameson and George. The three young people must work together to protect Callie from a dangerous white man with a connection to her past. The narrative does an excellent job of depicting the cultural tensions and greed that led to the Trail of Tears, one of the most shameful chapters in U.S. history, in an age-appropriate way for young readers. Sometimes, though, the story’s focus seems misplaced; because Callie is separated from her family when the village is evacuated, the true horrors of the Trail of Tears are only learned secondhand. Occasionally, it feels like the author spends more time exempting the “good” white people from any culpability than on illuminating the suffering of the Cherokee people. Still, many scenes, such as one in which the white settlers gleefully loot the abandoned Cherokee homes in Rattlesnake Springs, are very effective.

An engaging introduction for young readers to a dark time in U.S. history.