The Crossing Stone

A story history forgot. A love that couldn't survive it.

In the spring of 1665, a young Wampanoag woman stands alone in a meadow, building a cairn from stones that remember everything - while the boy she once loved walks toward her wearing English wool and brass buttons, his long hair cut short, his native tongue half-forgotten.

The Crossing Stone is a sweeping, heartbreaking work of historical fiction inspired by one of early America's most astonishing untold stories: Caleb Cheeshahteaumuck, the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. But this is not simply his story. It belongs equally to Wanisquam - the sachim's granddaughter who first taught him to read, who loved him before the English ministers claimed him, and who was left behind when he crossed into a world that had no place for her.

Set against the backdrop of colonial New England on the eve of King Philip's War, The Crossing Stone asks the questions that history never answered: What does it cost a person to bridge two worlds? What is lost when you learn to speak in the language of those who are erasing you? And when the war finally comes - as everyone knows it will - whose side do you stand on?

D.C. Bruno writes with rare tenderness and fury, bringing to life a forgotten chapter of American history through two unforgettable characters caught between love and loyalty, tradition and survival, assimilation and resistance. This is a novel about the bridges we build between people, the sacrifices that make them possible, and the terrible truth that not every crossing leads somewhere safe.