"Cherokee Reel" - Hardcover

Report copyright infringementby James A. Humphrey (Author)Lisa Waters, a half native American married to a freedman attorney, becomes the social queen of Fort Smith. She forms a lifelong friendship with the wife of John Ross, the Cherokee political giant but alienates the opposition, Treaty Party leader Standhope Watie. Her famous Trail of Tears sister's cruel murder exposes simmering public tension that forces a move to Tallequah, her mother's ancestral home. Business and commercial growth propels the family's prosperity but prompts an identity struggle. Influenced by Ezra, her husband; Moss, a fiddler ex-slave activist; and Mary Stapler, the nation's first lady, she organizes a freedom railroad and founds a women's rights movement. Unrest disrupts these efforts and thrusts her confused personality into the civil war as a US army nurse. She loses a beloved spouse and sense of reality at the Battle of Pea Ridge, then adopts a grief driven quest for blood lust vengeance.The freedman mus