Violent change has swept across the land in the wake of the Spaniards' expeditions, threatening the long-held ways of the Real People. And still more change is coming: A new tribe of white men who call themselves Frenchmen, enemies of the Espanols, have come - not, they say, to conquer, but to trade. And the balance of power may yet shift, as the people band together to fight back, and seek the help of these new white men and their weapons.

In the sixth novel of Robert J. Conley's magnificent saga of the Cherokee, the marauding Spaniards have returned to the territory near the home of the Real People, leaving carnage and abandoned villages in their wake. The Cherokee council has determined to seal off all passes leading into their land to all but their clanspeople.

But there is one young man who anticipates the coming of the Espanols with excitement. He is Asquani, the son of an escaped slave and a Spaniard. Though he and his mother have a place among the Real People, Asquani has never found a home there. Amid reports of Spanish movement in nearby lands, he slips away from the village, striking off in search of the white men - the people of his father. There he hopes to be accepted as he has never been in the tribe where he has grown to manhood.

Asguani will find the Spaniards' island encampment and there learn the ways of the soldier and the priest. But soon comes the day when he must decide whether he is Spaniard or Cherokee, whether he must deny all that he has been and join the white men in cutting a swath of terror and blood through the lands of the Real People...or stand with his own to drive the Spanish soldiers back across the sea.