Guardian of the Hills

**A young girl in Depression-era Arkansas discovers her Native American

heritage when a series of strange and troubling spiritual events plague an

archaeological excavation on sacred lands**

The mounds have stood for centuries, holy ground for the Quapaw Indians of

rural Arkansas. Pamela and her mother, left destitute by the Great Depression

and forced to move in with Pamela’s well-to-do grandfather, are newcomers to

the small town of Flat Hills. Ostracized by her high school classmates because

of her Quapaw heritage—a culture she knows nothing about—the quiet, sad

teenager silently wishes they had never come to this place. But while

wandering alone through the countryside, she stumbles across the sacred hills

and discovers an ancient artifact that fires up her grandfather’s

archaeological fervor. Soon a crew moves in to excavate, ignoring the

objections of the local Native population, and Pamela begins to experience

nightmares and terrible visions as an ancient evil reaches out from beneath

the disturbed hallowed ground.

When a string of inexplicable accidents befall the workers at the digging

site, and thousands of crows gather ominously at its edges, a young girl who

has always been kept sheltered from her family’s past will have to make the

most difficult decision of her life and embrace the strange and powerful

destiny that she never dreamed could be hers.

A tale of suspense, the supernatural, and coming-of-age, Victoria Strauss’s

_Guardian of the Hills_ was selected by the New York Public Library as a Book

for the Teen Age and was a South Carolina Association of School Librarians

Junior Book Award nominee. An ingenious blend of historical fiction and dark

fantasy, this is a page-turning tale that thrills and chills in equal measure.