Historical, United States, Contemporary 

In 1838, thirteen thousand Cherokee were forced from their southeastern homeland and walked nine hundred miles through four winter months to present-day Oklahoma on the tragic relocation trek known as the Trail of Tears. Uprooted and betrayed by the government they had trusted, the Cherokee struggled to endure the cruelty, disease, fatigue, and spiritual despair of the Trail and to face the prospect of beginning anew on unfamiliar soil.

Bringing to life the ordeal are the haunting voices of Maritole, a young Cherokee woman; her embittered husband, Knowbowtee; and a host of others -Cherokee and white, soldier and missionary, parent and child. With its luminous prose, infused with the flavor of the Cherokee language, Pushing the Bear "retains the complexity, immediacy, and indirection of a poem," said the Los Angeles Times. Its "very restraint and evenhandedness make it a powerful witness to one of the most shameful episodes in American history."