Where Eagles Soar

June M. Blurton is a retired speech/language pathologist.

The story is set in the United States in the mid-1800s. A 17-year-old
girl is smuggled out of Poland and away from the Tsar’s Police. She is
living with her aunt and uncle in America when they decide to travel
west in a wagon train. There is a massacre en route, and the girl is
taken captive by a Cheyenne warrior. They fall in love and marry.

Where Eagles Soar includes the inevitable raids, rapes, and burnings.
What sets the book slightly apart are its glimpses into the Cheyenne way
of life. The more the heroine sees of it, the more she disparages her
own roots. The Indians’ loyalty to family and community and their
respectful coexistence with the land’s plants and animals make her
feel that it is the white settlers who are the savages. These settlers
are demanding more and more Indian land, and eventually there is a
showdown between the U.S. Army and the tribe.

The heroine and her adopted tribe live through so many traumatic
incidents that this should have been a dramatic tale. Unfortunately, the
clumsy, fulsome prose style obscures the story’s merits.