Iin 1776, in the Kentucky settlement of Boonesboro, fourteen-year-old Jemima Boone and her friends Betsy and Fanny Callaway disappear from their afternoon canoe ride. Boonesboro quickly realizes the girls are the latest victims in the blood feud between natives and settlers in the territory. The Shawnee tribe that has taken the girls are still reeling from the latest colonial massacre: The murder and scalping of dozens of natives by the white men who had supposedly welcomed them. The incident had united native tribes across the land, and Hanging Maw, a bloodstained warrior seeking a road to peace, set out on a warpath through central Kentucky. Hanging Maw recognizes Jemima Boone and knows she could be the key to something grander than revenge. Matthew Pearl unearths a forgotten and dramatic series of events from early in the Revolutionary War that opens a window into America's transition from colony to nation, with the heavy moral costs incurred amid shocking new alliances and betrayals.