Return From Captivity

Naftali: ”Who am I – a Cherokee warrior, or a Jew?”
Chanale: “Where are my brothers and sister? Why don’t they come for me?”
Berel: “Should I keep my promise and marry Toiby? How can she know what it means to be a good Jewish wife and mother?”
Mina Rose: “I must leave my father’s house, but I have nowhere else to go!”

In the popular novel The Captives, readers met – and learned to love -- Toiby and Naftali, two Jews abducted as children and raised as Cherokee, and Berel Weinberg, who miraculously rescues them from captivity.

But the story is far from over ...

How can a Cherokee brave wrap tefillin on an arm that knew how to wield a deadly tomahawk and a forehead formerly decorated with warpaint? Can a girl versed in the ways of native American women transform into an eishes chayil? Will the Jewish community they are seeking to join even accept them? And what about the little girl fleeing an orphanage, embarking on a dangerous journey with only an imaginary friend as her guide?

Set in a small Jewish pioneering community in an increasingly tense pre-Civil-War border state, Return From Captivity is popular author Rochel Istrin’s can’t-put-it-down novel of adventure, discovery, and the infinite power of the Jewish neshamah to return to its people.