Ride the Wind

by Lucia St. Clair Robson

First published 1982

Amazon

4.6(2,390)

In 1836, nine-year-old Cynthia Ann Parker is taken during the attack on Fort Parker in Texas and adopted into a Comanche family. Renamed Naduah, she learns the language, skills and obligations of her new community until Comanche life becomes her own. She marries the warrior Peta Nocona and raises a family that includes Quanah Parker, while raiding, trade and seasonal movement bind the household to the southern plains.

The novel places Cynthia Ann’s life within the long Texas–Comanche conflict, showing how settlement, militia campaigns, disease and the destruction of the buffalo economy erode Comanche independence. Her forced recapture by Texas Rangers separates her from the family and culture she recognises as home. Robson presents captivity and assimilation from Cynthia Ann’s perspective, turning a famous frontier story into an account of identity, kinship and dispossession.