FIVE SISTERS. FOUR ARE KIDNAPPED. ONE GOES AFTER THEM. ALL THEIR LIVES ARE CHANGED FOREVER. ”Conway's historical novel features prose as rich as its characters ... hypnotic.” —Kirkus Reviews "An extraordinary historical novel." —Akron Beacon Journal On a humid day in June 1806, on the edge of Ohio's Great Black Swamp, seventeen-year-old Susanna Quiner watches from behind a maple tree as a band of Potawatomi Indians kidnaps her four older sisters from their cabin. With both her parents dead from Swamp Fever and all the other settlers out in their fields, Susanna makes the rash decision to pursue them herself. What follows is a young woman's quest to find her sisters, and the parallel story of her sisters' new lives. The frontier wilderness that Susanna must cross in order to find her sisters is filled with dangers, but Susanna, armed with superstition and belief in her own good luck, sets out with a naive optimism. Over the next five months, she tans hides in a Moravian missionary village; escapes down a river with a young native girl; discovers an eccentric white woman raising chickens in the middle of the Great Black Swamp; suffers from snakebite and near starvation; steals elk meat from wolves; and becomes a servant in a Native American village. The vast Great Black Swamp near Toledo, Ohio, which was once nearly the size of Connecticut, proves a formidable enemy. But help comes from unlikely characters, both Native American and white. Thieving Forest explores the transformation of all five sisters as they contend with starvation, slavery, betrayal, and love. Fast-paced, richly detailed, with a panoramic view of cultures and people, this is a story of a bygone place sure to enthrall and delight. “Thieving Forest is the gripping story of Susannah Quiner’s quest to find and recover her sisters, kidnapped as part of a plot against the family, all struggling to survive in the unforgiving wilderness that was 19th century Ohio. The interwoven tales of each sister – and Susannah’s search through the vast forest and swamp that once bordered Lake Erie – are told in fast-paced prose that vividly portrays a time long past and the timeless challenges and choices of life both then and now. Fans of literature about early life in America from Last of the Mohicans to Little Women will be delighted to discover Thieving Forest and add it to their list of books to enjoy again and again.” – Alice K. Boatwright, author of Collateral Damage and Under an English Heaven