Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1519205 in Books
• Published on: 1999-09
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: .88" h x 6.39" w x 9.36" l, 1.04 pounds
• Binding: Hardcover
• 216 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Previous novels based on the sketchy history of Cynthia Ann Parker, the white mother of Quanah Parker, the legendary Comanche leader, have focused mainly upon her life among the Comanches, which began in May 1836, when the nine-year-old daughter of a Texas Ranger was taken captive by a Comanche raiding party. Bradshear adheres to the facts, but goes further in imagining her inner life after she becomes a Comanche in spirit. Unlike other captives, who over the next five years are returned to their families, Cynthia Ann steadfastly refuses to be bartered back to white civilization. She marries Comanche Chief Peta Nocona and bears two sons and a daughter. In 1860, Cynthia Ann is seized--with her baby daughter, Toh-Tsee-Ah (anglicized: Topsannah)--by a band of Texas Rangers who massacre and mutilate a camp of Comanche women and children. Taken against her will to an elderly uncle near Fort Worth, she protests bitterly and begs to be returned to her Comanche family. Thwarted and grieving, she gradually withdraws deeply into herself, changing her name to She-Mourns, and making several unsuccessful attempts to escape from the mostly well-meaning but inadvertently cruel relatives where she is sent in succession. After Topsannah dies three years from the date of her mother's recapture, Bradshear depicts Cynthia Ann as becoming virtually catatonic; she dies in 1870. Bradshear's research is impressive, and the members of the extended Parker family are fairly and carefully drawn. If his habit of rendering his heroine's speech in Comanche is distracting, he succeeds in conveying her anguish as an eternal exile. But the narrative drags on with needless detail, and Bradshear's elaborate recreation of She-Mourns's inner life eventually leaves the reader numb. (Oct.)

Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This novel might more accurately be titled Killing N udah because when its central character is recaptured by Texas Rangers in 1860, having been abducted by Comanches 24 years earlier, she has long since ceased thinking of herself as Cynthia Ann Parker. Basing his fictional speculation on a careful reading of the historical record, Bradshear chronicles the heartbreaking descent into despair of a proud woman who could not forget her warrior husband and two sons. With no one heeding her requests to be returned to her husband and sons or even to receive news of them, Parker finds images of their torture and death blending with her recollections of Comanche life. Uncomfortable with the tight clothing, unfamiliar language, and restrictive social customs of white society and rejected by much of her family, she finally begins to scheme to go back to the Plains. Public library patrons will appreciate this engrossing novel, which can also supply a personal perspective to supplement history texts.AKathy Piehl, Mankato State Univ., MN
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.