to her relatives near San Antonio. Four years earlier, a band of Kiowa raiders viciously killed Johanna Leonberger's parents and sister; sparing the little girl, they raised her as one of their own. Recently recovered by the U.S. Army, the inconsolable ten-year-old with blue eyes and hair the color of maple sugar has once again been torn away from the only home and family she knows. The captain's sense of duty and compassion propels him to accept, though he knows the journey will be difficult. Winding through unsettled territory and unforgiving terrain, the four-hundred- mile odyssey south proves dangerous. A corrupt Reconstruction government runs the state government, and anarchy and lawlessness has taken hold. The captain must watch for thieves, Comanche and Kiowa, and the federal army?and corral the wild Johanna, who has forgotten the English language, tries to escape at every opportunity, and refuses to act ?civilized.? Yet as the miles pass, the wary Johanna slowly draws closer to the man she calls Kep-dun, and the two lonely survivors forge a tender bond that marks the difference between life and death in this treacherous land.