Susan Page Davis. Captive Trail. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2011. See here for Moody’s page about the book.
Captive Trail is part of the Texas Trails series, also known as the Morgan Family Series. This series focuses on the Morgan family in nineteenth century Texas. In Darlene Franklin’s Lone Star Trail, the Morgan family makes reference to a member of the family who was missing. Susan Page Davis in Captive Trail tells the story of this particular family member, Taabe Waipu (Billie Morgan), who had been captured by the Comanche. Captive Trail
is about how Taabe came to be reunited with her family, with the help
of a mail carrier named Ned Bright, some nuns, and other friends.
The book was pretty slow at first, but I got really drawn into it
when the mail carrier Ned brought a buffalo hunter who spoke Comanche,
in hopes that this would help him to communicate with Taabe. Taabe
recognized the buffalo hunter and did not want to speak with him, so the
nuns hid her and told the buffalo hunter that Taabe was not there.
Ned, later reflecting, concluded that there must be some reason that
Taabe did not want to speak with the buffalo hunter, and that perhaps it
was because she had an experience with him in the past. Not only did I
admire the respect that Ned and the nuns were showing to Taabe in this
scene, but the scene also made me long more for Ned to find a translator
whom Taabe could trust, so that the barriers of communication could be
redressed.
Another scene that I found moving was when one of the sisters was
speaking to Taabe and Taabe’s Mexican friend, Quinta. Taabe was telling
the sister that her father died in the war, and the sister concealed
that this war was the one between Texas and Mexico, to avoid causing a
rift between Taabe and Quinta. Taabe admired the sister’s judgment,
wisdom, and consideration, and so did I, as a reader.
I was happy that this book from an evangelical Protestant publishing
house was depicting Catholic nuns as heroes. I would have liked to have
seen a bit more, however, about the differences between Protestant and
Catholic beliefs. This was touched on in one place in the book, where
Ned was explaining to Taabe that the hymn “Amazing Grace” was a hymn
sung by Protestants, and that Protestants and Catholics worship the same
God but have different beliefs. But I would have liked to have seen
more about this.
I am a bit ambivalent about the book’s portrayal of the Comanche. I
would have liked to have seen a more sympathetic portrayal of the
Comanche, one that sought to understand issues from their point-of-view,
without denying that there were Comanche who did some bad things. The
book did portray the Comanche positively, on occasion, but not as often
as I hoped. At the same time, the picture of the Comanche that we get
is largely from the perspective of Taabe, who did not want to live with
them. The book acknowledges, though, that there were many captives who
preferred to stay with the Comanche.
I would like to thank Moody Publishers for sending me a review copy of this book.