This is a gripping tale of an innocent family caught up in the barbarity of the great Indian war of 1675-76 which devastated half New England's towns. As an infant, James Ware is hidden by his mother during an Indian attack, survives and is raised by a foster family. Now a ministry student, he is shocked and guilt ridden when his jealous foster brother calls him a "squaw's spawn". Seeking the truth about his family, he is led to Gull Eye Parker, a rough, irreverent trader, the one man who knows what happened. James' naive faith in predestination is challenged when Gull Eye discloses how chance, cruelty, religious bigotry and hypocrisy exacted their toll on the Ware family. The story depicts the captivity of James' mother, Betsy, among the Nipmucs and French Indians and her treatment upon her return and it follows Gull Eye and James' father when they sign up to fight with the Indian hating Sam Mosely in the hope of finding the woman they both love Set in the reality of the brutal seventeenth century, it is the account of two cultures divided by a common savagery with Englishmen sanctifying their actions as righteous and Indians desperately trying to reclaim their way of life.