Let’s help celebrate Martha Engber’s latest book, which is out now. Learn more here.

About the Book 

A consummate warrior and brilliant strategist, Pino is a young Native American woman who must fight against fierce invaders to save her tribe — and spirit — from annihilation in precolonial southern New England.

The strange tale of sisterhood begins on the stormy spring morning her tribe faces imminent attack by a contingent of the mighty Pagassett Nation, infamous for destroying small tribes in its quest for land and power. Pino knows this is the moment she’s been waiting for, a chance to save her people and maybe —maybe — redeem herself for failing to rescue her beloved sister, murdered ten summers ago.

Aided by her best warrior and forbidden love, Tow, and key tribal leaders who witness Pino’s gift for camouflage, she clandestinely influences strategy in the short, but wildly intense conflict. She soon discovers her real opposition is Meesha, a beautiful near-slave taken in by the invading tribe when just a girl. By learning how the other operates, the women form an intimate, almost magical sisterhood in their internal fight to free their inner demons.


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About the Author

Martha Engber is the author of WINTER LIGHT, the 2021 IPPY Gold Medal Winner in Young Adult Fiction. Her other books include THE WIND THIEF, a literary novel, and GROWING GREAT CHARACTERS FROM THE GROUND UP. Her memoir, BLISS ROAD, will be published by Vine Leaves Press June 6, 2023.

A freelance editor and workshop facilitator, she’s had a play produced in Hollywood and fiction, poetry and essays published in Watchword, the Berkeley Fiction Review, Iconoclast and other literary magazines. She received her Bachelor of Journalism degree from the University of Missouri — Columbia before working as a freelance reporter for the Chicago Tribune, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and other national publications.

She lives in California with her husband, where she bikes, hikes and surfs when not writing, trying new recipes and reading. She appreciates a wide variety of books and has a penchant for poetry; memoirs of all styles; literary and historical novels; and enlightening nonfiction, and neurological research in particular.