Left alone to guard the family's wilderness home in eighteenth-century Maine, a boy is hard-pressed to survive until local Indians teach him their skills.

Elizabeth George Speare was born on November 21, 1908, in Melrose, Massachusetts. She attended Smith College and received bachelor's and graduate degrees from Boston University. Though she always wanted to be a writer, she didn't begin her career until after she had raised her family. Among her many wonderful works are two Newbery winning novels, The Witch of Blackbird Pond and The Bronze Bow, and the Newbery Honor book The Sign of the Beaver. In 1989 she was presented the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award for her substantial and enduring contribution to children's literature. Elizabeth George Speare died in 1994.