Mark of the Bear Claw

Makow felt his belly twist inside him, knowing the game he watched would soon turn to carefully planned violence. He could hear his mother's voice, "It is better to have peace, Makow, better to have peace." But the anger surged inside him - the English who could not see through their arrogance, the trader's son who had insulted him time after time, a grandfather who believed the he, Makow, had fought with his lost brother before birth. He turned the rock over and over in his hand... Makow was not yet a man, but he sensed the tension and heard unspoken rumors of war that floated like ghosts through the Odawa lodges around Fort Detroit. Then, in the light of a huge council fire, the great Pontiac arrives, speaking words of war against the English. Caught up in the wild rage of the warriors, Makow is angry with his mother because of her unusual friendship with the English and for insisting that peace is better than war. But she claims there are good reasons for her to warn the English about Pontiac's plans, and she instructs Makow's grandfather to take her son for his vision quest at their ancestral home-weeks away by canoe. In the journey that follows, Makow searches for the truth about himself and his family. And although he has always loved his grandfather, Makow cannot control his anger when he learns the meaning of his name and its connection to his lost brother. Packed with adventure, woven with intricate relationships, and set in the factual Pontiac rebellions of 1763.