SHAGOON / Victoria P Shea (ePub)

Raised from infancy under strict supervision in a California Spanish mission, Ana prays for someone to care for her like a mother, to belong to someone. When she faces death from injuries caused by an earthquake, it is only her adopted brother's defiance of the padres that saves her life when he carries her to a nearby Ohlone village. There, she experiences life outside the mission for the first time, and her healer becomes like a mother, answering her prayers; but her freedom is temporary. Soldiers arrive to take her and her pet falcon back to the mission.

At age 14 as she considers marriage, the padres unexpectedly send her away to the Alaskan wilderness to serve as a missionary to her Tlingit people whom she has never known. She is shocked by the foreign world as soon as she steps away from the mission and travels on Discovery with Captain Vancouver, a notable group of British officers, and a steamy young Hawaiian named Kualelo. Now she is torn between desire for Kualelo and the fulfillment of her duty along with the possibility of finding her family.

Ana gains strength through her travels as she deals with loss, disease, murder and death; and she learns about the spiritual influences of tribal heritage. As indigenous people of Alaska begin to interact with strength against "Cloud Face Tribes," she wonders where she belongs. She befriends a Hawaiian queen and assists the leader of Russian America, but nothing prepares her for what it means to be Tlingit.

SHAGOON begins in 1764 with Ana's determined young mother whose intense love for her warrior husband launches a cultural change for future generations.