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When Molly Hilliard is kicked out of physician training in Baltimore in 1796, she travels to join her family in The Northwest Territory in search of the freedom to become more than an herbal healer and dreams of saving pioneers from illness and disease until she literally loses everything in the icy waters of the Ohio River when her canoe overturns. Molly discovers that her medical school sponsor, Dr. Andrew West, has followed and caught up with her in Pittsburgh, and she must trust strangers to help her evade the meddling man who is hell-bent on marrying her.
Romney Applewood survived ten years as a captive among the Delaware natives when The Greeneville Treaty between the U. S. and the Indian Nations frees all white captives, and he is finally able to search for his younger sister who has been living with another tribe. Just as he is about to take her to a doctor in Boston to help Sarah Jane talk again, she is kidnapped. Suddenly he is back on the frontier searching for his sister despite there being a bounty on his head for “aiding and abetting the enemy”.
Molly and Romney’s destiny is sealed when they bond over saving others from drowning, bullet wounds, and smallpox, but he doesn’t want Molly’s dreams to be shattered by his past and thinks the best thing is to leave her in Marietta to forge a future as a doctor. His brain says go, but his heart shouts never let her go!
Saving Marietta: Journey to Freedom, Book 1
Joy E. Held
$19.99
ISBN 9781958914922
AVAILABLE FROM HEADLINE BOOKS, INC.
EXCERPT:
May 1785
Western Kentucky frontier
Daylight splayed its yellow-orange fingers at the edge of the western Kentucky horizon as the Applewoods stepped out of the cabin. Joseph carried an axe, a saw, and a musket. A powder horn hung from his belt. His wife Nancy followed, rake and hoe in hand. A linen cloth was tied around her waist in such a way as to hold the day’s seeds. She stopped and turned to the open cabin door where her children stood sleepy-eyed and watching.
“Remember to wash out the breakfast bowls, Romney, and you two keep to the yard where we can see you,” she said.
Her son nodded and yawned as his little sister Sarah Jane shadowed him in the doorway. Framed by the stacks of crude-cut logs and mud, Nancy could hardly see them as everything in sight was about the same color. Drab brown and dirty gray. Everything but for the beautiful sunrise. This was the only moment of the day she ever really enjoyed out here among the tall trees and endless fields of grass.
After the birth of their daughter, the freedom, opportunity, and wildness called to her husband. The Virginia Commonwealth’s taxes and crowded townships compelled him to uproot the family and move west. Nancy left behind her rewarding business of fashioning clothing for fine ladies, but she didn’t stop sewing. She made clothes for her family, linens for the house, and a doll for her baby girl, Sarah Jane.
Any time Nancy complained about the loneliness, her husband reminded her that it had been only a few months. “Have patience,” Joseph told her nightly as they lay on the straw mattress on the floor. Maybe after the crops took hold and supplies had built up she’d feel better about being in this isolation called Kentucky. Although there were bright blue skies, lush green forests, and waving grasslands as far as the eye could see, it was barren of people. Nancy had loved having friends and neighbors close to home in Virginia. People to talk to, the market to visit, and the business she had built as a seamstress fed her soul and made her content.
There was no one here except her family for miles and miles, and that’s why Joseph Applewood liked it. He didn’t need people as much as she did. Not only was she lonely, but she also worried every second of every day and night. Worried about where their next meal would come from. Worried about the cold and the damp. Worried about their health. And she worried constantly about Indians.
***
Eleven-year-old Romney was accustomed to his parents working in the field daily. He was big enough to help with the farm work, but he watched Sarah Jane and did the house chores instead. She toddled along behind him while he refilled the water in the cabin and collected kindling.
At midday, the family usually sat together on tree stumps near the edge of the garden and shared biscuits. Today, however, his parents didn’t stop trenching and seeding because the morning glow had succumbed to a mass of gray clouds. They needed the rain, but they also needed to get the seed in the ground. Joseph and Nancy worked through supper hoping to accomplish the whole day’s planting before the heavens opened up.
After chores, the children played their favorite game. Romney pretended to chase Sarah Jane around the base of a giant maple tree whose wide roots spread out from the tree like bark-covered tentacles. It was part of the game to leapfrog over the gnarly roots, and four-year-old Sarah Jane was always ready for a nap after this activity.
When Romney playfully snatched her doll and ran around the tree, Sarah Jane did an awkward about-face and started after him. Her chubby, baby girl legs stumbled. She fell and wailed, as children will do. Her cries pierced the air, and Nancy Applewood’s head jerked up from planting seeds. She straightened her back and squinted her eyes, not at the children, but at a figure lurking near the cabin at the edge of the dense forest.
“Indians!”
As soon as he heard his mother scream, Romney grabbed Sarah Jane and ran for the cabin. An arrow swished through the air next to him, and he turned in time to see his father in the field swinging up his musket. The arrow landed in the center of Joseph’s chest, and he fell on top of the newly plowed rows without getting a shot off. Nancy Applewood hurried toward her children, skirts clutched high and her head down low.
Just as Romney was about to cross the threshold, an Indian grabbed him and his sister. His stomach lurched as his nose and mouth were covered by a large, grimy hand that smelled like dirt and sweat. A second warrior snatched Sarah Jane out of his arms.
“No!” his mother screamed, reaching for her babies. The red man holding his sister shoved Nancy onto her backside. Romney looked to the field where one of the raiders straddled his father’s body and sawed Joseph’s scalp from his head. Nancy scrambled to her feet and dove for Sarah Jane. His mother was clubbed on the side of the head by the blunt end of a tomahawk. She lay motionless on the ground, a stream of red wiggling away from her battered skull. Foul tasting bile rose in Romney’s throat as he and Sarah Jane were dragged toward the forest. The boy struggled in his captor’s arms as fear engulfed his brain.
At the edge of the woods, they stopped and a red man forcibly twisted Romney’s head around to watch the looting and burning of his family’s cabin. He tried to turn away from the carnage, but the Indian grabbed Romney’s hair and forced him to watch as his whole world disappeared in the fire and smoke. At the sight of his mother, eyes wide open and head spilling blood, tears streamed down his cheeks and anger seethed in his young heart. Romney briefly wondered what it felt like to die. Surely, they were going to kill him and his sister next.
But that didn’t happen. They ran through the woods for over an hour, then stopped and set up a crude camp. They tied the children together with a rope around their ankles. Sarah Jane buried her face in Romney’s belly, and he wrapped a protective arm around her. Someone brought them water in a hollowed-out gourd. He helped Sarah Jane drink, then he drank the rest. They promptly fell asleep on the ground as night ate up the forest.
Early the next morning, Romney woke with a start as something jabbed his ribs. Sarah Jane wasn’t beside him. He saw her sitting on a horse in front of an Indian who was leaving camp. He jumped up to follow, but the rope around his ankle pulled him down. He was tied to a tree. The red men laughed.
“Bring her back,” Romney shouted. “Sarah Jane!” His sister turned and looked at him from around the body of her captor, fear showing in her beautiful, sky-blue eyes.
“Where’s her doll?” Romney demanded. An Indian pointed toward those leaving. At least she had her doll. At least she had a small measure of comfort in the doll her mother had made for her.
When the riders disappeared from view, Romney waited, his hands twitching to punch something. With Sarah Jane gone, he figured they would kill him. Instead, they untied him, gave him a little food and water, then helped him up onto his father’s horse that had been taken during the raid. He and the seven Delaware Indians who had burned his home and killed his parents rode through the forest in the opposite direction of the warriors who took Sarah Jane. He would learn later that she had been taken by the Shawnee. He fought back tears by silently vowing to do whatever necessary to find his sister and avenge the murders of his parents. Knowing he would have to stay alive in order to fulfill such a pledge.
Joy E. Held is an author, educator, book coach, and yoga teacher living in West Virginia with her family. She enjoys herb gardening, junk journaling, and walking. She is a member of The Authors Guild and The Society of Children’s Book Writers & Illustrators. Joyeheld.com