Hardcovers with Dust Jacket
 
"No one weaves a tribal story quite like Robert Conley. Conley's books are entertaining, colorful, and chock-full of tribal history and culture."--Wilma P. Mankiller, former Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation Few writers portray Native American life and history as richly, authentically, and insightfully as Robert J. Conley, an important voice of the Cherokee past. The novels in his Real People series combine powerful characters, gripping plots, and vivid descriptions of tradition and mythology to preserve Cherokee culture and history. In this, the third volume of the series, the Real People are in danger. The Ani-Kutani, the despotic ruling class of all-powerful priests, has been overthrown, but no new governing power has emerged to fill the void they have left, and now internal conflict threatens to tear the Cherokees apart. But an even more terrible danger looms from without. The rival Suwali people, predators who sense the tribe's vulnerability, prepare to wage a vicious war of conquest that could bring the Real People to their knees. In the desperate struggle to achieve peace and create a new social order, one man holds the key to the future of the Real People: the last of the Ani-Kutani, the only priest not butchered. He alone knows the secret that will save the Real People--and he is about to pass on this dangerous knowledge to a young boy.