The Book Bandit's Library : Read an excerpt from Yellow Bird’s Song by Heather Miller

Yellow Bird’s Song
By Heather Miller

Publication Date: March 19th, 2024. Publisher: Historium Press. Pages: 370 Pages. Genre: Historical Fiction

Rollin Ridge, a mercurial figure in this tribal tale, makes a fateful decision in 1850, leaving his family behind to escape the gallows after avenging his father and grandfather’s brutal assassinations. With sin and grief packed in his saddlebags, he and his brothers head west in pursuit of California gold, embarking on a journey marked by hardship and revelation. Through letters sent home, Rollin uncovers the unrelenting legacy of his father’s sins, an emotional odyssey that delves deep into his Cherokee history.

The narrative’s frame transports readers to the years 1827-1835, where Rollin’s parents, Cherokee John Ridge and his white wife, Sarah, stumble upon a web of illicit slave running, horse theft, and whiskey dealings across Cherokee territory. Driven by a desire to end these inhumane crimes and defy the powerful pressures of Georgia and President Andrew Jackson, John Ridge takes a bold step by running for the position of Principal Chief, challenging the incumbent, Chief John Ross. The Ridges face a heart-wrenching decision: to stand against discrimination, resist the forces of land greed, and remain on their people’s ancestral land, or to sign a treaty that would uproot an entire nation, along with their family.

Excerpt

John Rollin Ridge, West Dessert, Utah, 1851.

Instead of other travelers along this desert route, we’d found wagon carcasses, adding ours to the lot. Whether human corpses decayed inside, I couldn’t say. I didn’t stop to find out, ridding myself of guilt for not burying the dead. My body couldn’t have done it properly with so little water, not without following directly behind them.

As the afternoon waned, we dismounted and walked beside our thirsty animals. In the desert, a man’s horse becomes too weak to carry him. So, he travels on foot, closer to the dust, breathing and clogging his mind with villainous grains. Packs double their weight with worry, heavier with one last blanket of self-preservation. Yet, parched though he may be, his mind sings songs, like uprooted choruses from a withered elder, telling his trials to impatient warriors who already know the legend’s end.

Expanses of grass shrunk into patches, peeking through worn spots in the desert, like leg hair peeking through worn and holey farmhand pants. We found the pooled water brackish, the color of tea from iodine, salt mixing with sparse rainwater. It wasn’t potable for man or beast. With each disappointment from the lack of soluble water, our progress trickled, nearly stopping entirely.

The sway of horses and pack mules found their rhythm, sluggish though it was. Heat rippled across the sand to just repel back to us from wide mountain berths. Thorny bushes turned pale, a shade lighter than the sand at our feet, desperate for water deep in their roots. Snakes could not reach it and fled, finding no shade.

We pressed forward into the sun, past the mountains near Salt Lake. Each pull at the rim of our hats remained where it was stretched. Bandanas covered our mouths, eyes asquint, leaving each of us absent identity.

Aeneas coughed, attempting to break his silence, rallying saliva enough to articulate some question or another. One which I’d likely have no answer to. He said, “How are we gonna feed the horses, Rollin?”

I was right.

Wacooli answered behind me. “Anee, we’ll have to search for grass on foot and bring it to ‘em.”

From my brother’s response to Wacooli’s lack of enthusiasm, I knew Aeneas stewed in his thoughts. His concern for our animals was more about him than the beasts.

Aeneas said, “You know what I’m hungry for? Grandma’s fried bread, Mama’s glazed chicken, Honey’s pole beans boiled with fatback, and strawberry pie.”

“Damn it, Aeneas! Doesn’t do us any good thinking about it.” I took the fatal risk of putting my thoughts to voice while lingering in Aeneas’ conjured savory tastes. I bit my tongue and swallowed twice. “Aeneas, do you remember Papa asking Mama to take all the seeds out of his strawberries?”

“Nope. Too little. You can hold Papa in your thoughts better than me, Rollin. You’ve got more stock.”

When I didn’t answer right away, he asked, “What did Papa say?”

“Said they got stuck in his teeth, and she needed to remove them.”

“Did she throw something at him?” Aeneas smiled briefly and tried a laugh, but his throat was too dry to form the sound.

“No. She kissed him, as I remember it.”

The memory was as sweet as the fruit. Our lives were so predictable then, freedom through synchronicity. Running Waters will always be home, not the cabin in the West at Honey Creek, or Mama’s dogtrot in Fayetteville, but our home, Running Waters, in Cherokee Nation East, settled among valley lands in the foothills of the Appalachians.

My parent’s extensive farm stretched into the valley on a high hill, crowned with a fine grove of oak and hickory, with a large clear spring at its foot. The orchard was on the left, wheat and cornfields to the right, pastures of cows, goats on one side near the house, and sheep grazing on the other.3 Behind the house, the running spring gave our home its name. After Grandfather’s New Echota Treaty in 1835, we, too, would run over rock, slip on moss, and fall downhill with only brief plains to pool.

The ground whitened under our horse hooves, salted sand gathering in random odd-shaped lines. Only God could articulate their rhyme and reason. Boot tracks marked our path northwest. Each saunter brought another thought: some forward, most backward. Where we’d been, what we’d lost. My thoughts rambled without any respite.

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Heather Miller

As a veteran English teacher and college professor, Heather has spent nearly thirty years teaching her students the author’s craft. Now, with empty nest time on her hands, she’s writing herself, transcribing lost voices in American’s history.

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