12 Drums of Change

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From Library JournalIn mid-19th-century Alberta, young Running Fawn's world of beauty and serenity is disrupted by the violence of white settlers stealing Blackfoot lands and by the increasing harshness of life on assigned reservations. Although Running Fawn slowly resigns herself to life on the reservation, she struggles fiercely with the strange beliefs of the Christian missionary who has come to live and teach among her tribe. Because of the strength of Running Fawn's convictions about the corrupt nature of the settlers and Christianity, her final conversion rings false. Still, Oke (The Red Geranium, LJ 11/1/95) combines the panorama of Alberta's history with the typical, gentle simplicity of her storytelling to fashion a tale that will be popular among her many fans.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From BooklistChristian romance writer Oke, whose sales have now topped 13 million, turns in a sensitive story of a young Blackfoot girl coming of age in nineteenth-century Alberta. Running Fawn's people have been devastated by smallpox and are struggling to make a new life on the reserve. A naive young missionary, Martin Forbes, arrives to preach that Jesus died for everyone, not just whites. He begins a simple school and selects his two most promising students, Running Fawn and the chief's son, Silver Fox, for the mission school in Calgary. Oke's at her best in the school scenes, through which Running Fawn is in constant distress; Silver Fox holds his own rather better, since he is determined to lead his people into rapprochement with the whites. Running Fawn decides to walk home from the school--several hundred miles--when she learns of her father's illness, and there are some nice passages, delivered in simple, almost poetic sentences, describing her as she fashions moccasins and snares a jackrabbit. And there's a love story, of course, as the lonely young missionary tries to marry Running Fawn and as Silver Fox actually does. Much more appealing than Oke's last offering, the gimmicky A Gown of Spanish Lace. John Mort