What readers are saying

A Woman of Marked Character by Nancy Stanfield Webb

History Through the Words of a Formidable Woman

Finding an historical marker and later the grave of Sarah Ridge Paschal Pix, an educated 19th century Cherokee woman nestled under Southern live oak trees on a former cattle ranch near Galveston Bay Texas, led the author on a decades-long journey to discover and write Sarah’s life story.  Sarah Ridge was born in western Georgia in 1812, and was the daughter of Sehoyah (Susanna) Wickett and Major Ridge, the Cherokee leader and former warrior who had previously fought with Andrew Jackson.  Unlike the typical log cabin homes of most Cherokee families, Sarah grew up in a prosperous family and lived in a two-storied framed house on a nearly 300-acre family plantation.  Cotton, tobacco, and corn were grown there with the help of 30 enslaved African Americans.  

Little is known of Sarah’s early life other than that she was educated at Salem Academy in North Carolina.  Although her parents were illiterate, her father as the tribal council leader and frequent visitor to the White House and Congress fully believed in the power of education to assist his peoples in their communication with the European Americans and their leaders.  Conflict with these newly established United States colonists arose as the Georgian settlers moved westward, expanded onto the lands of the Cherokee nation, caused the nullification of countless treaties, and resulted in the eventual removal of the entire Cherokee nation from their cherished lands.  Internal conflicts within the Cherokee clans also arose in their decisions as whether or not to sign yet another treaty with the US government and leave for Indian Territory.

Although federal documents and their associated notes place both Major Ridge and his daughter Sarah at some of the grievance meetings at the White House and Congress, there are no details of Sarah’s presence. This omission does not create a problem for the author in this brilliantly researched historical fiction novel; instead Nancy Stanfield Webb simply writes the relocation story of these indigenous peoples as observed not from the side of the victors, but from that of the victims, the Cherokee peoples, via what she perceives could have been Sarah’s experiences.  

The author’s writing excels in the well-composed chapters entitled “Sarah Speaks” that are interspersed throughout the novel.  Here, Nancy Stanfield Webb imagines her main character to possess the dynamic oratorical skills of her famous father.  In these chapters the author skillfully slips aside from the main narrative to bare the voice and inner soul of Sarah.  Webb characterizes Sarah not as a passive, female Native American, but as an assertive woman who speaks her mind freely in her condemnation of Congress and the Presidents who had abandoned countless treaties with the indigenous nations.  Even in her marital relations with her often duplicitous husband, George Paschal, a white lawyer whose greed repeatedly outshines his virtues, Webb portrays Sarah as a confident woman who is totally unafraid to lash out at his many improprieties.  In giving such a strong voice to the fiercely loyal Sarah, the reader feels not only the depth of Sarah’s courage, her anger, and her love for her family, but also empathizes with her resolute quest for revenge against those within the Cherokee Nation who had wronged her family.

This novel is the first of a two-volume work, in which Nancy Webb has shed new light on this time period, the injustices suffered by the Cherokee peoples, and captured the spirit of a remarkable Cherokee woman. I look forward to reading the second part of Sarah’s journey.

Maryanne in North Carolina