The Captured Girl

To be honest, I found the first two pages of this novel so disturbing I put it down thinking I would be unable to read it.  However, since I won The Captured Girl - A Novel of Survival During the Great Sioux War (#619) in a GoodReads First Reads giveaway, I felt I owed it to author Tom Reppert to read at least twenty pages before I gave up on it.  I'm glad I stuck with it, as I soon found myself totally caught up in Morgan O'Connor's story.  What I had read that bothered me so much turned out to be character development for Frank Nash, her nemesis.

In 1875, when an Army cavalry raid on a Cheyenne village frees Morgan O'Connor from four years of living with the Cheyennes after all but her younger brother are killed during a raid on their ranch, she has mixed feelings.  She has grown to love some of the Indians who were killed, and runs to save herself  when she is set upon by Frank Nash, one of the scouts.  Second Lieutenant Will Raines rescues her, and is put in charge of returning Morgan to civilization.  Son of a wealthy New York family, this is his first brush with action, and he is sickened by what he has seen, but determined to make his mark in his chosen career.  Babysitting Morgan O'Connor isn't exactly what he had in mind.  Most of the army wives back at Fort Harrison cannot understand how Morgan could have lived with the Indians and not taken her own life to avoid "a fate worse than death", but Morgan is a survivor, and her courage and determination has kept her and her small half Indian son alive.  She refuses to go back to New York City to locate her relatives until she finds her brother Connor, taken at the same time she was, and living with a different band of Indians.  Not until word comes that he is dead does she allow herself to be sent East, where she is famous in the tabloids of the day as "The Captured Girl".  Things are not much better for her there despite her notoriety, and she finds herself longing for Lone Tree, her home.  Frank Nash is still in pursuit of Morgan who he aims to kill.  Her skill with a rifle may be the only thing standing between her and certain death.

This story has everything: strong character development, page-turning action, a love story and a relentless, seemingly unstoppable villain.  But mostly, it's about courage.  What it takes to stay alive in the worst of circumstances, and to even eventually, thrive.