Wild Ran the Rivers : One Family's Western Odyssey : FiveTrails West Book 1

This is a story of pioneers, pirates and ponies, floods, earthquakes, a mysterious wilderness settlement and how the second generation of a Cherokee family found a home on the upper reaches of the Little Red River. Ruth Harris, barely 16 years old, captured by river pirates, is sold to and forced to marry a pirate; her brother Jerry is given to the widow of one of the pirates. They are held prisoner on Pirate Island until the New Madrid earthquakes of 1811-1812 provide them a way of escape from the island. They flee from the quakes through trackless wilderness and Jerry comes of age during their sojourn at Flee's Settlement when he experiences his first gunfight and helps rescue an Osage family from their captors. Ruth Harris and her younger brother, Jerry, who are of mixed Cherokee and white heritage, head down the Ohio with their parents to settle new country, perhaps in Arkansas. Pirates kill their parents, and the kids become captives on a Mississippi River island. Ruth is forced into marriage with a ne'er-do-well and bears his child; Jerry seems destined to become a pirate. Then the New Madrid earthquake of 1811 intervenes