Prairie Lotus

by Linda Sue Park

“SHOULD BE OUR LAST DAY,” Papa said when they stopped to make camp. He unhitched the tired horses from the wagon, then led them down a little draw to water, while Hanna began clearing the ground for a fire. They had journeyed for almost a month since leaving Cheyenne, their most recent stretch in near three years of travel. Three years without a real home.

Brave writer Arrow Week 1

Suddenly, Hanna saw movement on her right. Someone was approaching the depot stealthily, just as she had. Heart thumping, Hanna stayed very still. If I don’t move, maybe they won’t see me, whoever they are . . . To her complete dismay, the person headed straight in her direction. Then she heard a loud whisper. “I knew you’d be here.”

BraveWriter Arrow week 2

“You stop thinking about yourself. That’s where the sadness is, inside you. You look outside instead. At other people. You do things for other people, it fills you with good feelings, less room for the bad ones.”

“Sometimes beautiful things aren’t for buying. They’re for dreaming.”

If we’re not going to do it right, we oughtn’t do it at all.”

“Papa!” she cried out as she threw open the door. “Papa, do you mean to say that you’re going to report them? To Mr. Harris?” Her outburst startled Papa, who was in the midst of pouring himself a cup of tea. The hot brown liquid sloshed over the edge of his tin cup, onto the tabletop and then the floor. “What the blazes, Hanna!” he shouted, banging the teapot down and spilling still more tea.

Bravewriter Arrow week 3

I always cared about the unfairness. But I used to think only of how white people treated Chinese people. Now I know it’s about how white people treat anybody who isn’t white.

This was Indian land until a few years ago—no. It still is Indian land. Stolen by white people. You steal something, that doesn’t make it yours.