the Heart of Country

In a land where water, grazing ground, and dignity are contested as fiercely as any battlefield, Manuelito watches the world of the Diné tighten around him. Fort Defiance rises in the heart of his country, and with it come soldiers, fences, promises, and hunger. Each new road and order presses his people closer to a reckoning they did not choose. As raids, reprisals, and shifting alliances spread across the Southwest, young Juanita learns that survival is measured not only in courage, but in memory, kinship, and the small acts that keep a people from vanishing. Sheep must be counted, messages carried, children protected, and the truth of each loss remembered. Sweeping, intimate, and deeply human, The Heart of the Country is a historical novel of resistance, family, and homeland-an account of Manuelito, the Diné people, and the forces that drove them toward the ordeal history would remember as the Long Walk.