Native American romance set among the Apsaroke/Crow in the 1830s.
Moon Hawk is playing a dangerous game. Her heart is set on Winter Man, but why would a man with so many lovers want to take a wife?
Challengining his virility captures Winter Man’s attention, but their tease and spar soon spirals beyond control, threatening Moon Hawk and her family with ridicule and shame. Is this Winter Man’s intention, or is a deeper, more cunning plan coming to fruition?
From buffalo hunting to horse raiding, this is a story of honor among rival warrior societies and one woman’s determination to wed the man of her dreams.
Excerpt:
The cold water of the creek had been unusually invigorating. Perhaps it had merely been the company and the circumstance. Moon Hawk believed so, but it seemed imprudent to delve too deeply into the reasons for her intensified senses. She walked at Winter Man’s side seeing new colours in the dry, over-grazed pasture they trod, a different beauty in the cloud formations above their heads. The air seemed never to have smelled so sweet, or the breeze to have felt so vital. She locked her arm about her husband’s for the sheer enjoyment of his touch, and listened to him laugh and joke with the young men who constantly called out to him.
Meat was waiting outside their tipi, a kettleful already cooked. It steamed busily when she removed the lid.
“I think we are about to entertain guests,” Winter Man mused, raising a jocular eyebrow.
Moon Hawk lifted the kettle into the lodge and lost no time in preparing a fire for it to sit over. She brushed Winter Man’s hair as a wife should, and painted his face as he directed. Then she sat and let him brush her hair and let him paint her face. She felt as proud as any married woman ever could. It was a husband’s act of love and devotion that everyone in the village could see.
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