Where the Broken Heart Still Beats: The Story of Cynthia Ann Parker by Carolyn Meyer

           I received this book for Christmas and read it in TWO days!!! It was wonderful with a new and interesting theme: Native American captive. For those of you who don't know the story of Cynthia Ann she was captured in a raid by 500 Comanche Indians when her entire family was raided and killed. When she was captured she was only nine years old. Cynthia Ann remained with the Comanches for twenty-five years. After years of searching for her a group of Texas Rangers heard that a nearby tribe of Comanches had some American captives. One of those captives happened to be Cynthia Ann Parker, wife to the chief Peta Nocona. The Texas Rangers realized who it was and forcibly took her back to her American family against her will. Once she was "home" she was amid strangers and a strange way of life. She did not remember living in a house and spoke very little English. Upon her recapture her family learned that she had three children two older boys, and a infant daughter, Topsannah. Her oldest son Quanah would become the last Comanche chief. Life for Cynthia Ann with her family was hard. She did not understand why she was there, and not with her husband and sons, she had been allowed to take Topsannah with her. Topsannah thrived with the English, but her mother withered. After Topsannah died of pneumonia in 1864 Cynthia Ann died of a broken heart. The book tells her story in two alternating points of view Cynthia Ann and her young cousin Lucy. The book is one that will make you cry for Cynthia never got to return to her husband and sons.