Light on a Distant Hill: A Novel of the Indian West — B.J. Scott

Winner, 2011 WILLA Literary Award, Best Original Softcover Fiction, sponsored by Women Writing the West.
In 1876, sixteen-year old mail-order bride Ellen O'Hara sets off westward from Salina, Kansas to meet her husband-to-be, a cavalry officer stationed at Fort Walla Walla in Washington Territory. En route, her traveling party is attacked by Indians near Elko, Nevada. Badly wounded, Ellen can think of nothing more than heading north to her fiance. But she wanders off into the wilderness and disappears. Eventually found near death by a band of Shoshone Indians, she becomes immersed in a doomed alien culture she grows to admire. Knowing tragedy is in their future, she fights against her own race for the survival of her new friends and for her man, the Shoshone chief Bear Paw. When she is returned to white society, and on trial for murder, she must choose between the culture she was born to and the one in which she became a woman, between the man she was promised to and the man she has grown to love. Bill Scott, author, Light On A Distant Hill, winner of the 2011 WILLA Award for Original Soft Cover Fiction by Women Writing the West.