The Spirit Child — Alison Naomi Holt

"The Spirit Child seems a mystical work, flavored with Alaskan frontierism, Native American mysticism, and a lot of human interest...I want to know these people. It is a healing piece of work, far beyond just a good read." A. Ross To the Shona who took her captive, the 8-year-old child is nothing more than property, lower even than the animals she tends. For most of her life she survived by being a shadow, watching her captors as they communed with their Spirit Guides and listening as they recited their legends around their fires. She knows about the seven gods and the Seven Realms and about the Holy Spirit Guides who travel the pathways to mentor those willing to heed their advice. What she doesn't know is that recently, the oldest of the Guides, the Black Panther, Denabi, has sensed a maleficence stalking both the pathways and the child. As Denabi investigates the source of the evil, she soon comes to realize that the salvation of the Seven Realms may lie in the hands of an orphan considered so insignificant by her captors that they've never even given her a name.