Pushing the Bear - Diane Glancy

In 1838, 13,000 Cherokee were forced from their land to walk 900 miles along the Trail of Tears to present-day Oklahoma. This illuminating and challenging chronicle of loss, despair, and regeneration (Washington Post Book World) brings this ordeal to life via the haunting voices of a young Cherokee woman, her husband, and a host of others--Cherokee and white, soldier and missionary, parent and child, the living and the dead. In a novel that retains the complexity, immediacy, and indirection of a poem, Glancy brings to life the Cherokees' 900-mile forced removal to Oklahoma in 1838 and gives us a powerful witness to one of the most shameful episodes in american history (Los Angeles Times).