Changing Woman

2024 NM-AZ Book Award Winner for Best First Book-Arizona 2024 NM-AZ Book Award Finalist for Best Fiction-Historical Arizona 2024 Will Rogers Medallion Gold Winner in Traditional Western Fiction 2023 Laramie Book Award Finalist for Americana Fiction 2023 Goethe Book Award Longlist for Late Historical Fiction 2023 Best Book Awards Finalist in Western Fiction sponsored by American Book Fest National Indie Excellence Award Finalist in Western Fiction Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award Finalist for Best First Western Novel of 2023 Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award Finalist for Best Western Novel of 2023 Arizona Territory, 1871. Valeria Obregn and her ambitious husband, Ral, arrive in the raw frontier town of Tucson hoping to find prosperity. Changing Woman, an Apache spirit who represents the natural order of the world and its cycle of birth, death, and rebirth, welcomes Nest Feather, a twelve-year-old Apache girl, into womanhood in Aravaipa Canyon. Mexican and Anglo settlers have pushed the Apaches from their lands, and the Apaches carry out raids against them. In turn, the settlers, angered by the failure of the U.S. government and the military to protect them, respond with a murderous raid on an Apache encampment under the protection of the U.S. military at Camp Grant, kidnapping Nest Feather and other Apache children. In Tucson, while Valeria finds fulfillment in her work as a seamstress, Ral struggles to hide from her his role in the bloody attack, and Nest Feather, adopted by a Mexican couple there, tries to hold on to her Apache heritage in a culture that rejects her very being. Against the backdrop of the massacre trial, Valeria and Nest Feathers lives intersect in the church, as Valeria seeks spiritual guidance for the decision she must make and Nest Feather prepares for a Christian baptism.