Joanne Herrmann

The Lost Loved Ones Joanne Herrmann

The Lost Loved Ones focuses on the tribulations of a Dakota family of the tribe's scout, Takota, who befriends the trapper, Jon Griswald, whom they know as "Troubled Spirit", and who chooses to live along the Mississippi River before it is developed by Polish settlers. After Griswald's death, the Takota family, who had lived with him, is decimated, all except one of the two sons, Kohana, who has left with indigenous travelers, and the youngest, Anpayto, whom the settlers call, Anya, and who tries to adapt to the ways of the settlers, which are totally unfamiliar to her. Eventually, her brother, Kohana, with a Medicine Man, returns and rescues Anpayto to take her and her two children back with him to Canada where the Dakota tribe now lives and where she can reunite with the childhood love of her life, Chayton. The story reveals the clash of two cultures, the Indigenous one of people who already lived in the wilderness that they loved and lovingly cared for, and the Polish settlers who, themselves, had lost their land in Europe and faced the hardships of a wilderness that they tried to conquer and supplant with their civilization on this terribly beautiful country and it's people.