Jessica's Book Thoughts

Setting: Fort Yale, Colony of British Colymbia, 1863

After school had ended for the day group of bullies set their sights on two of their classmates. One is a Chinese student, Lee Sim, who they push around and taunt verbally by calling him Chinaman. The other, Anasaia, a child of a mother who was native American, and a father who was a Welshman, ends up pinned to the ground and called half-breed. The two of them team up and manage to escape their bully classmates without any serious injuries. As malicious as the bully boys sounded it is a good thing that they helped each other and got away.

Excerpt:

...there was no way to shield her from  from the cruelty of Joshua ' words. Half-breed.

She pictured her mama and papa sitting near the woods tone that morning. They loved each other, Nikaia knew, but surely they must have known their marriage would produce children who landed in the void between two wildly different peoples. Perhaps in their youth they were too foolish in love, too deep in longing for each other, to worry about the future. It hadn't mattered that he was a Welshman and she a native Indian. The mocking names she sometimes heard in the schoolyard were bitter reminders of her own longjng...for what? She wasn't sure. To fully belong perhaps.