Someone's child

By Aleechawa and Alethea A. Adams-Wells

The adventures of Black Beauty is a story that few of us will forget and one that deserves the popularity it has known through many generations.Black Beauty is the autobiography of a courageous horse who was often badly mistreated. When first published, it was an immediate success. Anna Sewell died knowing that her book had indeed encouraged people to treat animals less cruelly.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0964578735
• ISBN13: 9780964578739
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Unole Pub. Co
• Length: 201 Pages
• Weight: 1.04 lbs.
• Dimensions: 5.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Thought provoking

Imagine the way a child sees the world, thinks, comprehends. Then put it in a book form, and that's what you'll have with Ms. Adams 3rd book. It was like reading a book written by a child. When I first read it, I was taken into this young girl's world of the hills of Kentucky. Watching her grow up, struggling with polio that grounded her till her seventh birthday, Living in a shack with her mother, and other sisters. Freezing, going hungry, and not sure if they'd make it though another winter while her father (Sir) was cavorting with another female. But in the meantime, she kept having these prophetic visions that came true. She also made friends with all sorts of animals, and slowly developed into this young woman, who went to school, and with the help of friends, and good teachers and instructors of the schools met many interesting people and developed into a remarkable young woman. This book like many of her works is thought provoking, interesting, and startlingly blunt. When I first met her, she told me that she doesn't like to read books that has 'too many adjectives'. She writes as she thinks, and speaks. In language that cuts right to the bone, and heck even boils the bones into soup :). But it also has a wonderful foundation of love, respect, and compassion that the reader can see develop, and mature from her early life, written in this book. She was indeed 'Someone's Child' and the world is blessed to have her. Please note, that according to Ms. Adams, this book - although the third published, is actually the *first* in the trilogy. Someone's Child, Lady In the Moon, and finally Message in the Wind should be read in that order. A 3 volume autobiography of a remarkably talented, and wonderful American Aboriginal Cherokee. - Kc

The third book of Aleechawa, a Cherokee from Kentucky....

The autobiography, "Someone's Child" like Ken Kesey's popular novel, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest"(1962), takes the reader inside a mental hospital--a Veterans' Hospital, in this case--where a young Indian, like Kesey's Chief Bromden, is subjected to a daily routine of inhumane treatment which most Americans would ascribe to a concentration camp, not a hospital. One major difference, however, distinguishes Alethea Adams-Wells' book from Kesey's novel: "Someone's Child" is non-fictional. Born two months prematurely, in 1951--the third child of a 14 year old Cherokee girl from the mountains of Eastern Kentucky--the author was named Aleechawa ('Good Hunter'). Though she did become an excellent hunter, skilled in tracking and shooting wild game, Aleechawa's name often took an ironic twist as she herself became the hunted in a world of human predators. After Alethea (her English name) was diagnosed with polio at the age of two weeks, for instance, the step-father she knew only as "Sir" attempted to destroy the crippled infant by burying her alive. A few years later, Sir--assisted by the county sheriff--would hunt Aleechawa down like a wild animal, and sell her (for $500) to an older man. In heart-rending story which alternates scenes from the Ward B lock-up unit of an Ohio mental hospital with those of various Cherokee homes in which Alethea was raised, the reader is granted a rare journey through the thoughts of a contemporary Cherokee woman--a journey whcih may cause us to recoil in horror, or one which can give unprecedented insight into the lives of a segment of our society often dismissed as "drunken Indians". A superficial reading of "Someone's Child", in fact, may leave an impression of a horse-thieving, moonshine-drinking, cigar-smoking Indian woman who lives by a gun and her wits; the careful reader, however, will meet a beautiful young Cherokee/Appalachian woman whose strong spirit and steady faith in the "Maker of Breath" have enabled her to survive, against insurmountable odds: polio, seizures, dyslexia, cancer; physical beatings, chronic verbal abuse, rape; the murder of her "babies", the death of her Paw, the fatal plane crash of her beloved Cherokee fiance, the terminal illness of her dearest friend--her Mama. Encouraged by her mother, her 'Paw', an occasional school teacher and such notables as author Jesse Stuart and singer Johnny Cash, Alethea learns to express her thoughts through poetry and painting; hence,though the author is economical with "flowery words", "Someone's Child" is filled with descriptive phrases, flavored with the mountain dialect of Eastern Kentucky. For example, instead of a "scraggly-headed child", Aleechawa writes, "Her hair looked like a bunch of baby kittens had had a good sucking on it!". Or, avoiding the tired cliche, "hungry as a bear", she declares. "I ate like an old hound that had been chasing a 'coon all night!". Making no claims as an academic treatise, "Someone's Child" will touch you in a way th