by Sharon Ewell Foster (Bethany House Publishers, $12.99)

"I would take everything back if I could. I would make everything be like it was. I would never have touched the honey.

But, wait, before I get ahead of myself, before I tell the story before it's ready to be told.

I'm an old woman and I do that sometimes.

I do not know exactly when I was born. I do know that I am very, very old. I speak the language of the People, Tsalagi--even now, though I've spoken English for a long time, my thoughts are still Cherokee. Their ways are my ways.

I was born before cars. I was born before the War Between the States. Long ago, many of the old ones used to live to see more than a hundred summers, and I think I must be like them. I have seen babies born, I have seen death, and I have walked the Trail of Tears--Nunna dual Isunyi--The Trail Where We Cried.

I have been a slave and I have been free. This is my story, the story of my family, the good and the bad of it.

I tell my story so that maybe someone else will live.

Some of my ancestors, they tell me, came from over the great waters, taken from their home faraway in Africa. I do not know that language, or the clan. But the people I do know have been here always, like the waters. I am Armentia. I am Cherokee, Aniyunwiya, one of The Principal People, and I am Black." --excerpted from the book