Desperate Crossing: The Jenny Sanders Pryor Story - Softcover

Riefe, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812555201 ISBN 13: 9780812555202

Publisher: Forge Books, 1999

Synopsis

Jenny Sanders Pryor, brash, impetuous, optimistic, nineteen, and married only seven months, embarked with her husband John, and their adopted seven-year-old child on what they thought would be a wonderful adventure: joining a wagon train along the Oregon Trail. Jenny and John were young and in love and eager to begin their new life together.

And then it happened.

The massacre lasted only a few minutes. Nearly all of the wagon train's men were out cutting wood, many of them without weapons, and suddenly, two hundred brutal Oglala warriors thundered into the camp. The men were forced to watch the rape and murder of their women and children. Captured, nearly beaten to death, and forced to succumb to slavery, Jenny Sanders Pryor endures a "marriage" to one of the Oglala's savage chieftains.

But every minute of her captivity, she plans her escape, while John does everything in his power to find her.

Even though there is precious little chance they'll ever see each other alive again...

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews

This 1865 tale of a young woman captured by warriors of the Oglala tribe in the Northwest re-creates the hatred seething among Indians, Army troops, and settlers--but with characters who sometimes fail to convince. In previous novels in Riefe's Iroquois series (Mohawk Woman, 1996, etc.), the author persuasively evoked torturous 18th-century tensions between whites and Native Americans. Here, Cincinnatian John Pryor, his young wife Jenny, and their seven-year-old adopted daughter Mary join a wagon train headed for Oregon. Near Fort Laramie, the party is attacked by Oglalas. Many of the settlers are killed, while Jenny, Mary, another woman, and a child are captured. Jenny plans an escape for the other three, who get away, but warriors return with their scalps. Jenny herself becomes one of the wives of the ancient chief, Ottawa. Meanwhile, John begins his frantic, furious search. The Army can't help; there are only 15,000 troops, and 300,000 Indian warriors are spread over a vast territory. John is sent for information to an ill-paid, but honest Indian agent, heavy-drinking Lincoln Hammer, who knows the score: ``The Indians know they're gradually losing everything . . . they know the sun's going down for them . . . every wagon they burn, every scalp they take delays extinction by a few minutes.'' At the same time, Jenny is living through her own ordeal, even keeping her junior high school guidance-teacherlike attitude intact (``Is being nice to him so hard?''). Before a ``happy'' ending built on tragedy, there are some fantastic treks and the slaughter of an entire fort's company. Jenny also deals not only with tomahawks and murder, but with a madman and his wagonload of corpses. Despite the limp characterizations, a rugged tale of survival with some haunting reminders of dark episodes in American history. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Library Journal

In 1865, a band of Oglala Sioux attack a wagon train near Fort Laramie. After killing 14 people, they kidnap Jenny Pryor, her stepdaughter, and two others. Only Jenny survives to the Black Hills, where she is forced to become the seventh wife of Chief Ottawa. Meanwhile, her frantic husband desperately tries to enlist the aid of soldiers to rescue her. To Jenny, the Oglala are filthy, blood-thirsty, and superstitious; the only sympathetic Indian is a Jesuit-raised Christian. He helps Jenny survive her ordeal, including her dispatch to another tribe and "husband." He also assists on the eventual reunion with her legal husband. Riefe's (Against All Odds, LJ 12/96) narrative is disjointed and episodic, but her depiction of Indians as treacherous savages is pretty consistent. As if to provide balance, she includes a brief afterword that explains that ill-treatment and sexual abuse of captives actually were quite rare. That wouldn't have provided as sensational a plot, however. Not recommended.?Kathy Piehl, Mankato State Univ., Minn.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Forge Books
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0812555201
• ISBN 13: 9780812555202
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 256