Oleta Stewart Toliver

Santa Apache Oleta Stewart Toliver

While dancing with joyful abandon after her coming of age ceremony, a beautiful Indian maiden is captured by hostile Indians. The Apache girl escapes only to be lost, injured and hungry. MeiLi?s peaceful life changes into one of danger and loss made endurable only by the healing skills learned from her medicine woman mother and the shamanic strengths passed down to her by her grandmother. The evil brave recaptures her, rapes her, and takes her to Pecos Pueblo as a slave. After two years of cruelty from a maddened crone, the girl is rescued by a Spanish rancher, Don Carlos de Vega. Her new life is filled with difficulty learning to exist in a new culture and surrounded by Catholicism while following her determination to remain true to her Apache heritage and their tribal Gaan. But the affection and respect the de Vega family develops for her sustain her. Gathering and using the native plants she knows will heal earn for her the name Santa Apache. Love for the illegitimate son she bears makes her life worthwhile and strengthens her, but can she triumph over sorrows and disaster? How can one whose lifelong purpose is to save lives finally commit murder? Can she fulfill the destiny foretold for her by an ancient spirit? Set against the background of 18th century Spanish settlement of the Southwest, this unforgettable drama is filled with conflict, romance, and triumph.