Chapter 27 Summary

Sugar takes Alice to the Cherokee Heritage Center to show her their grandmother's name on the rolls. She tells Alice that all she needs to do to be enrolled is to prove that she is descended from their grandmother.

Alice and Annawake meet privately at her Uncle Ledger's houseboat to discuss Turtle. Alice tells Annawake that she and Taylor are eligible for tribal enrollment and asks whether it would make a difference in the adoption situation. Annawake responds that it's more than that. Skin color makes a difference in what happens with Cherokee children in the mainstream culture. Also, a relative has come forward and asked Annawake to try to find the child that she believes is Turtle.

She compares the situation to a custody case that was won by a surrogate father who had lost all his relatives in the holocaust and...