Jessamyn West has taken a little-known incident—the cold-blooded killing of four Indian children, three Indian women and two Indian men at a backwoods maple-sugar camp—and fashioned from it a rousing adventure story solidly informed with philosophical and moral content. When is killing murder? When is it war? When is it self-defense?…

["The Massacre at Fall Creek"] is a story about the dawning realization that we are one species and share a common humanity….

West is … working with the materials of her own past, frontier America and the clash of men of good will and Sunday Christians, as well as that of two mutually exclusive ways of life, Indian and white. (p. 32)

Working at the height of her powers, with wisdom and maturity, ofttimes a quiet irony, close observation and well-researched detail, West has written a novel of character and incident. Believable women and men are caught...