Thirteen Moons

Looking back from old age, Will Cooper recalls being sent as a bound boy to operate a trading post in the mountains of North Carolina. He is taken into a Cherokee community, forms a lifelong bond with the chief Bear and pursues an intermittent love affair with Claire. As federal and state authorities press for Cherokee removal, Will becomes a lawyer, landholder and political advocate attempting to protect the community’s territory. The novel follows dispossession, adaptation and memory from the early nineteenth century through the Civil War and its aftermath.