The River That Flows Both Ways — Michael Cooney

Set in the 1640s, this novel includes some of the major figures of the early Dutch settlement in present-day Albany, New York: Harmen van den Bogaert, Arent van Corlaer, Adriaen van der Donck, Johannes Megapolensis and the Jesuit martyr Isaac Jogues. Matouac, a young Mohican boy, tells his story to the Dutch minister, Johannes Megapolensis. Determined to survive after his home and family are destroyed, Matouac learns the ways of the fierce Mohawks as well as of the Dutch settlers. He makes friends with the runaway nun Therese de Ville-Marie and falls in love with the slave girl Catharina. He also makes a deadly enemy in Lature, a renegade French priest bent on human sacrifice. Without a family of his own, he becomes a part of the family of the jovial and bisexual Harmen van den Bogaert. When Harmen faces death for what his fellow whites regard as the most unnatural of crimes, the young Mohican risks everything to free his friend from the prison at Fort Orange.