FernFolio

Captured during a Viking raid on her Irish village, Kiera is taken to Iceland where she is auctioned off as a slave to Bjorn and his wife Dagmar. When they join a small group of Norse settlers looking for richer fishing and hunting grounds and fertile land in which to plant crops, Kiera finds herself travelling from Greenland to Vinland, on Newfoundland’s northern peninsula. Though Bjorn and Dagmar are not unkind, and their small daughter, Lorna, loves her, Kiera longs to return to Ireland and the family she left behind.
The Viking settlement comes under repeated attacks from a local native band, the Thules, who are bent upon driving the invaders from the island. When a small group of Viking warriors sets sail in search of a safer site for their community, Kiera, a skilled seamstress, accompanies them to make necessary repairs to the ship’s sail. A sudden storm batters the ship and Kiera is thrown into the sea. The Vikings, believing Kiera lost, sail on, but Kiera is rescued by a young native man named Chocan who, with his sister Sooleawaa, nurses her back to health, and then introduces her to the Beothuck peoples.
Welcomed into Beothuck nation, Kiera learns participates in the caribou hunt, travels with them to their winter meeting place, and discovers that she has far more in common with these mysterious people than she could have ever imagined. However, though Kiera finds friendship and acceptance among the Beothuck, she continues to dream of returning home to her family in Ireland.
This book provides an interesting view of life in the earliest European settlements in North America, and of the vanished Beothuck peoples of Newfoundland.
FernFolio Editor