The Foothill Spirits: Book One - Frontier Life & the Shawnees

This book is a blend of history, fantasy, and time travel, providing teens and parents a story of early Ohio in the year it achieved statehood through the eyes of two preteen girls: one living in 1997 and the other in 1803. It is a tale of two families: farmers who squat illegally in the Northwest Territory and a nearby Shawnee family who refuse to move to Indian Territory in northwest Ohio.

The story begins in 1997 with Heather Jean. She accidentally desecrates the grave of Maggie Sue, who died in 1803. Her spirit travels back to the frontier days, lives for months inside Maggie Sue, observing life through her eyes and ears.

One evening, after Maggie Sue is bitten by a copperhead, she screams and is rescued by Shawnees planting crops in the moonlight. They adopt her and teach her their ways. She is well treated, but yearns for her family. Eventually she escapes, but finds all squatters (evicted by the militia) living in a makeshift camp. Typhoid fever is rampant. After she heals the sick with herbs (learned from the Shawnees), she is called a witch by the hill folks. After Maggie Sue becomes ill (with no herbs left for herself) and dies on Halloween, they say it's a sign she really was a witch.