Hawk's Cry is a historical fiction novel, interweaving two time periods, two stories, and two protagonists, each sent on a perilous quest.
Ryan thinks he is imagining the boy standing before him. When he reaches out to touch the young Cheyenne, laying the palm of his hand on the boy's chest, he feels the strong thump of a heartbeat. With this mystical encounter, twelve-year-old Ryan Tyler is sent on an impossible quest to return a rare artifact, part of a plains courting flute, to the wilderness of the Cheyenne boy's youth. Ryan experiences Cheyenne rituals and faces trials that make him question his quest into the rugged, untamed, and unforgiving Wyoming mountains.
A century and a half earlier, Little Hawk wants only two things, to live the life of Cheyenne and to become a Cheyenne warrior. But his world is turned upside down when his father decides to join a group of renegade warriors wreaking havoc across the plains. Not only is Little Hawk separated from his beloved grandfather, the man who helped him make his plain's courting flute, but he is forced to delay his vision quest and warrior ceremony. Traveling through the sacred Medicine Bow mountain range known for its powerful medicine, Little Hawk experiences a frightful vision. Now, he alone must come to terms with his dangerous future.
Often overlooked, the battle at Summit Springs, or White Butte Creek as referred to by the Cheyenne, was the last battle fought on the prairie of Colorado. Following this fight, the Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Sioux tribes were relegated to reservations. They no longer roamed the Colorado plains during the summer to hunt buffalo in preparation for the cold, winter months. The life of the Plains Indian in Colorado changed forever. Though Hawk's Cry is a work of fiction, Little Hawk was a real Cheyenne boy at the battle of Summit Springs and is credited with saving many women and children on July 11, 1869.
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