Sophia Deveraux's life is shattered when she refuses to
marry an Army officer in 1838. Her father is beaten and
Major Todd has her taken from her lovely Georgia home and
thrown in with the native people who are being forced off
their land and penned up in Fort Wool. The Cherokees are
kind to her and many of them have been educated in English,
but their good land and the potential for gold have made
these proud people all but invisible to the white settlers.
TRAIL OF HOPE shows the appalling conditions inside the
fort where Sophia befriends a man named Martin. He keeps
her informed on tribal deliberations. A younger man, Clay,
is by birth a Choctaw and moves from fort to fort gathering
details of the situation. His people were similarly forced
off their land and thousands died as they were marched to a
new territory. He and the Cherokee elders fear the result
of being forced to march during winter, but the intense
summer heat has kept the soldiers in the forts, where
mountains of bodies are accumulating. There can be no good
result. All Sophia has of her former life is a simple
doll, and fear of Major Todd keeps the man's subordinates
from freeing her. Clay gets beaten by soldiers and dumped
with the Cherokee on their bitter trail, and Martin and
Sophia care for him, as they walk to the Mississippi with
ragged blankets, mealy flour and no waterskins.
Sophia is a staunch friend to those who
aid her or need care, and I liked her adaptation to a life
for which she had not been raised. The callous racism all
around her is taken for granted, but some of the soldiers
are decent sorts, especially to the white woman. I
disliked the reappearance of robotic punctuation, Sophia
saying "You. Will. Not. Hurt. Him," which looks bad, is not
at all as people talk and draws the readers out of the
story and onto the printed page. Otherwise Heidi L.
Vanlandingham has done a fine job in bringing TRAIL OF HOPE
to a modern audience and giving us an understated romance.
Abducted from her family home in Savannah, Sophia Deveraux
is thrown into an army stockade with Cherokee prisoners
destined for the West. Though stalked by her abductor, she
is protected by three men on the long, deadly journey to
Indian Territory. Despite her starved and battered body and
soul, one of them steals her heart.
When Clay Jefferson lost his family, he vowed to kill
whoever murdered them. Trying to help prevent the removal of
the Cherokees from Georgia, he finds his heart torn in two
when protecting Sophia becomes more important than his vow
of vengeance.
Fate and a gypsy curse work together as Sophia is attacked
again but finds an inner strength she never knew she had,
and Clay is forced to make a difficult decision -- honor his
vow or listen to his heart?
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