The Holy Road

Dances With Wolves has become a modern classic, with nearly two million copies sold to date, the 1990 film adaptation won seven Academy Awards. In The Holy Road—itself the subject of a headline-making Hollywood film deal—master storyteller Michael Blake at long last continues the saga.

Eleven years have passed since Lieutenant John Dunbar became the Comanche warrior Dances With Wolves and married Stands With A Fist, a white-born woman raised as a Comanche from early childhood. With their three children, they live peacefully in the village of Ten Bears. But there is unease in the air, caused by increased reports of violent confrontations with white soldiers, who want to drive the Comanches onto reservations—a movement symbolized by the railroad, the white man’s holy road. Disquiet turns to horror, and then to rage, when a band of white rangers descends on the Comanche village, slaughtering half its inhabitants and abducting Stands With A Fist and her infant daughter. The three great surviving warriors—Wind In His Hair, Kicking Bird, and Dances With Wolves— decide they must go to war with the white invaders. At the same time, Dances With Wolves realizes that only he can move unnoticed among the white men, to rescue his wife and child.