Six Mile Creek
In May 1835, the Brodie family are on their way to Ft. Brooke (Tampa) in search of a better life, away from the rising conflict with the Seminoles. At Ft. King, an interim stop, the family encounters one of its own. Parker Brodie, a half-Indian scout adopted by the family as a child, is overjoyed to reunite with his half-siblings. Parker and friend Buck Woodbury are employed as translators and negotiators but are commandeered to protect the homesteaders, including peaceable Seminoles, on their final wilderness trek to Ft. Brooke.
The oldest Brodie daughter, Brynn, longs to be a wife and mother, and during passage to Ft. Brooke fortuitously comes into contact with the handsome Reverend Albright, the answer to her dreams of marriage and family. As tensions rise, and Seminoles in disagreement with their treaty-signing elders begin attacking homesteads, the Brodies find themselves in the middle of a conflict not of their making, in which Brynn is abducted by the disaffected Kinkeke. Parker, Buck and the quiet Yoholo, a Seminole who harbours unspoken affections for Brynn, set off into the wilderness to find her.
Craig’s heartwarming story is a sentimental and inspirational journey. The narrative is descriptive and convincing and explores relationships which are partially or not-at-all blood-related, and the tender realism with which Craig deals with this is particularly compelling. The difficult search for Brynn is page-turning as her internal journey moves from anger to acceptance of her fate, and the realisation that the one thing she must do is survive. Her ordeal as Kinkeke’s captive evokes conflicting emotions, and she is shunned and treated with disdain, a distrusted intruder in the peaceful Seminole camp. Beautifully rendered, the novel explores the choices we make, for good or bad, and how we come to terms with the latter.
