Thieving Forest

by Martha Conway

Overview

ON A HUMID MORNING in 1806, on the edge of Ohio's Great Black Swamp, seventeen-year-old Susanna Quiner watches helplessly from behind a tree as a band of Potawatomi Indians kidnaps her four older sisters from their cabin. With both her parents dead from Swamp Fever and all the other settlers away in their fields, Susanna rashly decides to pursue them herself. What follows is a young woman's quest to save her sisters and the parallel story of her sisters' new lives. Over the next five months, Susanna tans hides in a Moravian missionary village; escapes down a river with a young native girl; discovers an eccentric white woman raising chickens in the middle of the Great Black Swamp; and becomes a servant in a Wyandot village longhouse. The man who is in love with her, Seth Spendlove, is in pursuit after he realizes that his father directed the kidnapping. Part Potawatomi but living a white man's life, Seth unwittingly sets off on his own quest to reclaim his heritage as he searches for Susanna and her sisters. THIEVING FOREST depicts the transformation of all five sisters as the Quiners contend with starvation, slavery, betrayal, and love. Beautifully written and richly detailed, it paints a fascinating new picture of pioneer life among Native American communities, while telling a gripping tale of survival. "An elegiac, hopeful historical novel... hypnotic." (Kirkus Reviews) "A powerful tale of sisterhood and survival." (San Jose Mercury News)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780991618507
Publisher:	Noontime Books
Publication date:	08/15/2014
Pages:	416
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.85(d)
Lexile:	HL800L (what's this?)

About the Author

Martha Conway is the author of The Underground River, a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice. Her novel Thieving Forest won the North American Book Award in Historical Fiction, and her first novel was nominated for an Edgar Award. Her short fiction has appeared in the Iowa Review, Mississippi Review, The Quarterly, Carolina Quarterly, and other publications. She is an instructor at Stanford University's Continuing Studies program in Creative Writing.

Editorial Reviews

03/09/2015
In Conway’s novel, four recently orphaned sisters in 19th-century Ohio are abducted by Patawatomi Native Americans, and a feisty fifth, Susanna Quiner, the youngest, is forced to brave the untamed forest in order to rescue them. Aiding her on her quest is Adam, a crusty tracker, and Seth Spendlove, a secretive young neighbor. Meanwhile, the kidnapped sisters are overcome with fear and uncertainty. Susanna’s long journey finds her struggling with a situation that forces her to grow up quickly. Though overwritten at times, Conway’s book renders the Black Swamp region very well; the environment itself, seemingly endless and unmoved by Susanna’s human trial, is so evocative as to feel like a formidable antagonist. The scope of this old-fashioned pioneer adventure yarn is also impressive, and the full arc of Conway’s characters’ development, combined with a satisfying ending, is memorable. (BookLife)

Publishers Weekly

"An elegiac, hopeful historical novel... hypnotic." (Kirkus Reviews)

"A powerful tale of sisterhood and survival." (San Jose Mercury News)

From the Publisher

2014-08-08
An accomplished novel that looks at the true wildness of the wilderness and the stakes of rugged individualism. In 1806, a massive swamp stretches across northeastern Ohio. In the not-so-distant town of Severne, separated from the swamp by the Thieving Forest, there live five sisters who are just starting to learn how to get along following the deaths of their parents. It seems bearable enough until a band of Potawatomi tribesmen emerges from the woods, loots the girls' home, and kidnaps Aurelia, Penelope and Naomi. Aurelia, partially scalped by one of her captors, is found by searchers not long afterward and dies a few days later; Penelope and Naomi remain missing, and Susanna and Beatrice begin what seems an impossible journey to find them. A trying, harrowing search follows, vitiated by uncertainty and the dangers of shifting geography as well as racial and political disputes. The story is a careful consideration of the strength and flexibility of family bonds, as the sisters each go their own ways in the aftermath of the attack, though not always by choice. Susanna dreams of reuniting with her sisters, even when the dream seems destined to remain unfulfilled; after a long expedition with a native woman as a guide, for example, she finds that one of her sisters has married into a Native American tribe. Conway's (12 Bliss Street, 2003) historical novel features prose as rich as its characters; throughout, it looks at the hard facts of settling the American frontier and the capacity of the imagination to surpass the limitations of one's surroundings. The stark, solid plot never plods, moving deftly between the characters' physical and spiritual trials. Overall, it's a hypnotic, capacious and cutting evocation of a bleak period of American history. An elegiac, hopeful historical novel.

Kirkus Reviews