In The Crimson Path of Honor, the Civil War is over, and a violent period known as the Indian Wars is erupting. Ignoring the danger, a feisty young woman from Boston rebels against her tyrannical father's plans to marry her off to a family friend, and she seizes an opportunity to go west to teach. On the way to the Oregon Territory, her stagecoach is attacked, and she is captured by a marauding band of Lakota (Sioux) Indians who call the Rocky Mountains home.

Accepting her perilous situation, the young woman courageously confronts the daily hardships inherent in early Native American life. At first treated like an outcast, she eventually adapts to her circumstances and comes to respect the camaraderie of the Indians, even falling in love with her captor. Over time, she begins to challenge her abductor's traditional views on bloodletting and violence as the path of honor. Torn by her inability to justify her growing feelings for her captor in a culture of violence, she continually wonders why God has abandoned her in such a desolate place.

"M.B. Tosi has done it again. This is the historical novel at its best--realistic, filled with tough issues against a background of conflict and unrest."

--Jim Langford,

Director Emeritus of University of Notre Dame Press

Although born into privilege, Ayna Landau marries Karl Adler in 1924 and opens the door to a world of opportunities that propel her husband's company to the height of success in the porcelain doll industry of interwar Germany. As she basks in the glory of her triumphs, her idyllic life is interrupted by Adolph Hitler's meteoric rise to power in the 1930s as head of the Nazi Party. While the chaos the Nazis create throughout Europe culminates in World War II, Ayna and her family risk everything they have worked for to secure the safety and freedom of not only their family and friends, but strangers who seek their help, as well. Struggling to survive the depths of personal tragedy that befall her by the war's end, she abandons the Adler Doll Works and their beautiful villa to flee Germany mere days ahead of the approaching Russian army, determined to be reunited with her children in Switzerland. Ayna's perseverance and resolve to restore the Adler name to the prominence it once held becomes her final mission, in an effort to bequeath its legacy to her children, grandchildren, and all future Adlers.

Madeleine, a beautiful peasant girl, cannot resist the charms of Jean, a handsome champion of the upper class. She surrenders to her heart's desires, and their love sweetens into something amazing. But when her father is murdered, her dreams of marriage collapse before the impenetrable wall of class prejudice. With her grim new prospects restricted to life as a beggar or a whore, Madeleine grasps at the only escape she can: a new life in the New World. She signs a contract to emigrate to Quebec-where she'll marry a stranger and bear many children to help populate the New France colony.

Madeleine's experience quickly turns bitter as she struggles to overcome the frigid Canadian winters, the constant threat of Iroquois attack, wild animals, and the soul-eroding abuse of her husband. Isolation and crushing homesickness set in.

Worse, just as she comes to feel she cannot go on, the real nightmare begins: she discovers that the very man who murdered her father is living on her farm.

Her struggle for survival of body and soul are set against the expansive panorama of colonial Quebec, a place of awesome beauty and lethal danger. As Madeleine's extraordinary love story unfolds, real historical characters and authentic cultural details weave seamlessly into a rich tapestry of courageous pursuit of love and dreams.

Can her spirit resist defeat under extreme tribulation and deprivation of emotional support?