Chumash Heritage

Maggie Freeman had never thought of herself as a restless soul, but as she stood at the edge of the salt marsh, skirt whipping around her ankles in the bitter Maine wind, it felt like something inside her would blow apart if she remained another year in this unyielding place. The mudflats stretched for miles, pocked with the slow crawl of brine and the mournful cries of plovers. It was beautiful, in its own severe fashion, yet Maggie could never quite shake the feeling that she was a foreign body in this land—a transplant from a root system meant for warmer, redder soil.

Her mother's stories were the only bridge she'd ever had to California, land of the Chumash people and, by right, Maggie's true homeland. But Maggie's mother had passed on when she was still a child, and her father—a taciturn fisherman—offered no guidance beyond what could be gleaned from a man's hands worn raw by the salt and the nets. The villagers regarded Maggie and her brother with wary politeness; her sharp cheekbones and olive skin set them apart as surely as if they'd been marked with paint.