McLemore, Regina: Cherokee Clay

Winner of the 2021 Will Rogers Medallion for Young Readers! Broken Promises. Betrayal. Death. It is 1838. The Cherokee people are being rounded up by the U.S. government and forcibly removed from their ancestral lands. A young Cherokee girl named Bluebird is swept up in the Army's net, separated from her mother, and taken to a disease-ridden detention camp. While being detained there, Bluebird becomes close to an elderly woman and her grandson, Grey Wolf. Within weeks, they leave the camp and set out upon a horrific 5,000 mile cross-country march to Indian Territory-a journey that will become known to history as the Trail of Tears. So begins Cherokee Clay, a powerful multi-generational saga following the trials and tribulations of Bluebird, Grey Wolf, and their descendants as they fight for their very survival from the Trail of Tears to the Civil War and beyond.

When my Cherokee ancestors arrived in Indian Territory, it was not a choice. Their names are included on a muster list of the Trail of Tears, and their strength has inspired me to write the stories that they might have told.My own story began in the small town of Stilwell, Oklahoma, where I have lived most of my life. By twenty-four, I was married with two children, teaching language arts at Stilwell Junior High School. I diversified my career, eventually retiring as the librarian of Siloam Springs Middle School in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, in 2010.Even though I returned to work temporarily as a part-time library clerk at Stilwell Public Library, I found time to pursue my passion-writing. For the next seven years, I was published in Guidepost Magazine, the Oklahoma Genealogical Society Quarterly, the Green Country Anthology, the Starwatch Anthology 37, Saddlebag Dispatches, and in various newspapers and newsletters.