The Color of Lightning.

Jiles, Paulette (author).

Jiles, author of the best-selling Stormy Weather (2007) and Enemy Women (2002), interweaves three narrative threads into a compelling post–Civil War tapestry. The stage is set for a tragic cultural collision when freed slave Britt Johnson—a character firmly rooted in history and actual events—travels west with his family and settles in frontier Texas. His dreams of a new life, however, are brutally shattered when his wife and children are abducted during a Kiowa-Comanche raid. Determined to reunite his family, the only circumstance he doesn’t take into account is the assimilation of his children into Native American life. As the focus shifts back and forth between Johnson and the captives, Samuel Hammond, the newly appointed representative of the Office of Indian Affairs, serves as a deeply conflicted bridge between the two worlds. Jiles never reduces her cast of characters to stock stereotypes, tackling a traumatic and tragic episode in American history with sensitivity and assurance.