Soaring Eagle

This trilogy of Walks The Fire, Soaring Eagle, and Red Bird, you will find hard to put down! One of the best. It is about love, forgiveness, and how trusting the Lord with your life has the best outcome by far! These three books will certainly be on your favorite books list.

First of all, if you haven't read "Walks The Fire", you really need to read that first or you will be lost with "Soaring Eagle".Soaring Eagle, the adopted son of Jesse "Walks The Fire" King and half sister of Jesse's daughter Lisbeth, discovers that in a battle with the White man he has killed his sister's husband. This story follows Soaring Eagle and Lisbeth in their journey to forgiveness; Soaring Eagle and Lisbeth each discover the faith of Walks The Fire, and Lisbeth learns to love again. Once I began this book I absolutely HAD to finish it, reading it in meetings, at work, even in the bathroom. This one has everything -- tragedy, action, romance -- you'll love it!

I never expected Soaring Eagle to be better than Walks the Fire, but it was! I was totally caught up in the physical and spiritual journey of Soaring Eagle. His struggle to admit his connection to not only white people, but also to Christians, was enthralling. To add even more drama, Whitson has Soaring Eagle interact with Lisbeth's husband in a secondary plotline that will keep you spellbound. Normally I am not an emotional person, and I was actually sobbing out loud by the time that I read the last word of Soaring Eagle. I am a prolific reader of Christian fiction, and Whitson far outclasses her more well-known counterpart Lori Wick. The Prairie Winds and Keepsake Legacies series are likewise far above anything that I have read by Oke, Wick, Glover, or Peart (and I have read them all). My only complaint is that Whitson is not writing them fast enough!

Even better than Walks the Fire (which was great), Soaring Eagle is a spellbinding story of God's grace and human need. You have to stay with this one until the end. Everything comes together as pieces of a puzzle. Beautiful!

When I left off with Whitson's first book in this series "Walks the Fire" I was hoping book 2 would be as good. I was not disappointed. It was even more exciting! Jessie King is dead, LisBeth her daughter has just lost her husband in the Indian war, and now she seeks some meaning to life. In mourning, she finds she is too bitter to accept the faith of her mother. Soaring Eagle is fighting a battle of the cultures. He is an Indian who is forced to act like a white man. He refuses their God. Jim Callaway is a career soldier who had seen and done such horrendous things that he deserts the army, running, and ends up in Lincoln, Nebraska near LisBeth and smithy, Joseph. David Braddock is introduced in this book and as rich as he is, he cannot convince LisBeth to end her mourning and court him. So many changes in the town's people occur, the most outstanding being when the daughter of the town gossip accepts the call to an Indian mission school. There she meets Soaring Eagle and Carrie, a little white girl who is the only one who can reach into the heart and soul of Soaring Eagle. Soaring Eagle wears the gold cross which Jessie, his dead white stepmother wore, and a locket with the pictures of his mother and an unidentified woman...his sister whom he has never seen? LizBeth has nightmares about an Indian riding the plains with HER husband's locket around his neck. The interaction of LizBeth and Soaring Eagle is spell-binding and puts the reader heading straight into book 3, Red Bird.

This is the sequel to Whitson's first book, Prairie Flower and it is everything I expected. I read alot and Ms. Whitson's books are some of the most spell binding that I have owned. I try to purchase the books that move my heart and my spirit, to keep for re-reading in my older days and I hope to own all of hers. I am of Native American heritage, and her books have a fair and loving reference to the Native American Indians, that show that they too are human with hearts and hopes and fears just as everyone else that God himself placed on this great earth.