Echoes Of A Silent River

Dateline: Sunrise on January 29, 1863...

Near a small community in present day Idaho, the soldiers rode down from the bluffs surrounding Bear River with feet like ice, and guns loaded to kill. They had decided if they couldn't fight in the furious battles in the east, they would take their spoils wherever they could.

The Civil War is still raging in the eastern half of the United States. The Emancipation Proclamation has just been signed, and Mormon settlers had been living in the Salt Lake region for nearly 16 years. The morning sun peeked from behind a frozen dawn, and by sundown, the largest brutal massacre of Native Americans in the history of the United States had taken place.

Buried in the back pages of the nation's newspapers, the Bear River Massacre held little interest for the citizens across the country thousands of miles away. For the Northwestern band of the Shoshoni, the course of their own history would be changed forever...

Echoes Of A Silent River is a powerful and unique fictional story told in a poetry-prose format reflecting different cultural storytelling traditions. Imbedded inside the very real story of the Bear River Massacre, the story brings to life what the author calls 'echoes' of courage, honor, desperation and humor intertwined in the quirky love triangle between lonely Union soldier Josiah Bliss, a mysterious runaway slave woman of mixed blood heritage who has a passion for Christ, and a spiritually searching Shoshoni warrior.

It is a story that transcends time and culture. Echoes of a Silent River proves to be a thought provoking and uplifting compilation that alternately fascinates and informs us all,all the while while breaking stereotypes of what many think of as Indian spirituality.