In Our Time — Paul Joseph Lederer

In the summer of 1916, times were tough on the Cherokee Nation which many were now beginning to call Oklahoma. The Adair children had it no easier, no more difficult than any others. Their father was marginally prosperous, their mother kind, earthy.

The problems plaguing the Adair children were more of their age than of actual want.

At nearly eighteen, Shanna was a dreamer, one who yearned for a future of bright lights and cool, elegant men, of which there were few on the Nation. Tom, at seventeen was tangled in his first love, reckless and eager for adventure. Elizabeth, the youngest was studious and sincere in wanting to advance herself and the Indians around her.

There was still political trouble, the problems of forced assimilation and land seizures on the Nation. The shadows cast by these diminished their youthful joy in puzzling ways. It seemed to the Adairs that something was darkening the land.

So it was that Shanna found herself in that year slipping away from her home and running off to the young town of Hollywood, California searching for all that is golden. The darker clouds of Europe were now shadowing the Nation and Tom found himself traveling to the far land of France to participate in the white man's war.

To Elizabeth her time had come to try to fight back at inequities in the legal system which still oppressed the Cherokee people in her time.