Trouble's Daughter

by Katherine Kirkpatrick

Grade 7 Up-In this rich and engrossing fictional account of actual events, nine-year-old Susanna is captured by the Lenape after witnessing the massacre of her family and spends the next four years as a member of the tribe. Initially not wanting to "become an Indian," she holds the murder of her family close to her heart, attempts escape, and resists learning the Lenape language. She gains strength from her memories of her famous mother, Anne Hutchinson, the strong-willed and outspoken 17th-century heretic. Gradually, Susanna learns to communicate and partially accepts her new identity as Mee-pahk ("Pretty Leaf"). She finds a strength similar to her mother's in the wise medicine woman, Som-kway, and enjoys the friendship of her sister, Sa-kat. Susanna comes to recognize the inherent humanity of her new family, despite radical cultural differences, and discovers one day, somewhat to her dismay, that she "could no longer hate" them. When arrangements are made to trade her back to her whi