A novel offering young readers the opportunity to consider the life and perspective of an American Indian child at the time of the first European settlement in North America features Moss, a young boy who is unhappy that his father has asked outsiders to share his village's harvest meal. "Someday, you'll understand," his father tells him, but to Moss that answer is only another way in which he is treated as a child. Impatient to grow up and unhappy at the change in tradition, Moss ventures alone into the forest, thinking he will have his "away-time," the time when a boy seeks out solitude in the hopes of returning with his adult identity and new understanding. But in the forest Moss finds Trouble, a girl from his village whose desire to go against tradition makes her as restless and unhappy in her own way as he is in his. (Ages 9-11)