Gay G. Gunn

In the midst of a family celebration the first, free ancestor, a tenacious six-year-old Saidah, is savagely ripped from her family and beloved African homeland and deposited into slavery on a Georgia plantation and expected to survive under the care of venerable Aunt Pearl. Whisked to freedom by a Cherokee warrior, Saidah returns years later only to inadvertently escort their son, Black Pony, into the heinous system she’d escaped and the woman who’d raised her. Saidah dies leaving her son a cowrie shell and the edict… “Be who you are.”
The Civil War ends. Black Pony and Aunt Pearl try out their new freedom in Washington City, living in the shadow of the Nation’s Capitol until Aunt Pearl dies, freeing Black Pony to head west…on his own… a man-child of 12. A son to no one, Pony proves perfects, establishes and becomes…Colt Culhane. He conquers the frontier, blazes trails, rides range with his “boys", survives, and prevails. At long last he finds a wife, founds a town and raises a family… fiercely protecting their right to “Be who they are.”