Love to Water my Soul

Set in Oregon in the late 1800s, it is the story of Alice M, a young white child who falls from a wagon train heading for the Oregon Territory. The Modoc Indians find her, take her to their village, and brand her jaw to mark her as one who does not belong. Later she is traded to a Wadaduka tribe and adopted by Lukwsh, a loving strong woman. Asiam (Alice M) grows up learning the language and the ways of tribal life. She is given the name Shell Flower when she reaches womanhood, and falls in love with Shard, son of Lukwsh.

Through it all Alice M manages to hold on to the "crossed bars" on a chain she had been wearing when captured. She escapes from the tribe just before she is to be burned, and after days of wandering, stumbles upon a white settlement run by the Sherars. Later she learns of the tribe's capture and move to the Warm Springs Reservation.

Alice marries kindly Thomas Crickett, an older doctor who had come West to work in a mental hospital in Salem. With many Indian patients, the hospital proves an ideal place for Alice to use her background, and she discovers much about her origin and her faith in this strange setting. Following Crickett's death, Alice and Shard find one another again, and the story comes full circle in their shared happiness.