Broken hearted, New York debutante Christianna Lawrence flees her home and meets a Blackfoot captive on Montana's high plains. Saved from a flash flood as a boy, Rowan Cameron was destined to become a shaman. Divided by cultural misunderstandings, the extraordinary lovers surpass contrasting beliefs and join forces against railroad saboteurs--only to unleash the magic and spirit of the Ghost Dancer.
A sweeping story told against the background of the westward expansion. As Jim Hill's Great Northern Railroad pushes west, the once mighty Blackfoot nation have been confined to a reservation. To outsiders, Rowan Cameraon may be a white captive, but in his heart he is the Blackfoot shaman, Walks Alone, who has seen is people suffer starvation, illness, and death.
Christy Lawrence, Jim Hill's god-daughter has come west to recover from an illness that left her plagued with visions. Christy's newfound psychic powers frighten her and have caused her fiance and her family to question her very sanity. Whether or not her mind is weaker, of one thing Christy is certain -- her fiancé has fallen in love with her sister. She joins Jim at End-of-Track in Montana, where she meets Rowan, who recognizes a spiritual link with her immediately.
Christy wants only to be free of the past, and of the visions that plague her. But to Rowan, visions that come unbidden are not something to be feared, but something to be treasured as a gift from above.
Excerpt
As the strangers walked some distance away, Rowan tried to ignore the pain that sliced through his leg from the ankle iron. His shoulders burned from the raised position of his arms and the rawhide cutting into his bound wrists felt like fire.
"How long were you a captive?" The girl's eager expression told him she expected a reply.
He clamped his lips shut and refused to answer. Who was this scrawny napikwan woman to force him to speak? Rowan looked her up and down. When her gaze caught his, he saw eyes the color of moss along the shadowed edge of a stream, hair the color of chestnuts, but curly and cropped short. She looked as if someone had scalped her and the hair grew back. Not scalping, but something, something. Curious, Rowan let his spirit touch hers. At the moment of union he felt a great fire burning in his viscera: fear, fever, and pain. Through her eyes, he saw images of men in black coats who held long thin knives with tiny sharp blades. A moment later the vision cleared. So, the woman had known pain beyond endurance.
"Please, won't you tell me how you came to live with the Indians?"
Rowan had seen too many of his people starve to enjoy the sight of even an enemy with her skin so close to her bones. The soldiers would kill him anyway, as soon as the strangers left. Rowan let his spirit mingle with hers for another moment, then let go.
"They'll kill him when we leave." The thin girl turned to the bearded man beside her. ?Please Jim, do something!"
Shanghai Escapist grabs the faint-of-heart right from the get-go and serves up an ultimatum: What would you do if caught in the same circumstances? From the opening scene, the reader is tossed into the maze of daily intrigue as it existed in 1960s-70
