White Bear: A Novel of the Nez Perce Conflict, 1877

White Bear is a novel based on the amazing true story of the Nez Perce conflict of 1877, the so-called “last Indian war” of the American West. White Bear is an untested young warrior of the Nez Perce people, natives of the Pacific Northwest, led by his uncles Chief Joseph and the chief’s younger brother, the war-chief Ollokot. Forced off their traditional homelands and onto inadequate space on an Indian reservation by an unlawful treaty – enforced by the US Army – the Nez Perce choose peace instead of an unwinnable war. But renegade warriors among them suddenly attack white settlers in the area, in vengeance for old wrongs, before the people come onto the reservation—forcing the Nez Perce to escape in a desperate cross-country bid to reach sanctuary in Canada. Thus begins the extraordinary flight by the Nez Perce for freedom, a journey that will take them over a thousand miles of the roughest wilderness of the American West, and involve them in numerous battles and skirmishes until the final confrontation. It is in this turbulent context that White Bear comes of age.

Epic in scope and scale, White Bear features a large cast of characters on both sides of the conflict – the Nez Perce people attempting their long escape toward freedom, and the American military forces determined to stop them – to tell the unprecedented and highly dramatic story of the longest running battle in American history.