title: Tho I Be Mute
author: Miller, Heather
description: In 1856, Clarinda Ridge has returned to her Cherokee home. Through a night's torrential storm, she reads her parent's love story, authored by her own hand.Her father, Cherokee, John Ridge, attends the Foreign Mission School, a Connecticut academy for intelligent Indians in 1818. Because of recurring illness, he meets the steward's daughter, Sarah, who nurses him. Despite her pious parents and the protests of Cornwall's residents, the two fall in love and marry in 1824.Bringing his bride home to the Appalachians, John, now a lawyer and member of the Cherokee Legislative Council, intercedes against the U.S. government's Indian Agents to prevent the removal of neighboring Creek Nation in an attempt to build sovereignty for his own people.Sarah, leaves the hamlet of Cornwall, Connecticut to make a home in a culture foreign to her. She befriends Honey, half-Cherokee and half-slave, belonging to the Ridge family. Pregnant with their first child, Sarah faces captivity from white squatters, trades her freedom for Honey's life, and inadvertently, forces John to abandon his adopted white culture and return to his Cherokee heritage to find her and bring her home.