Currents of Change: The Occaneechi

Occoneechee Island, 1666. The Roanoke River is a highway - and the Occaneechi control it. On a four-mile island at the confluence of the Dan and Roanoke, Chief Posseclay has built the most powerful trading empire in the Piedmont. Astride the Great Trading Path, his people decide which furs go to Virginia and which muskets come back. Through Posseclay, his wife Nuna, daughter Elara the weaver, and sons Kestrel and Chayton, you live inside a vibrant 17th-century Indigenous town - corn, beans and squash, river weirs, chert arrowheads, winter counts, and the stories that hold a people together. Then Nathaniel Bacon arrives. In 1676, Bacon's Rebellion shatters the balance. Forced to fight the Susquehannock, betrayed by the English they fed, the Occaneechi watch their island burn. From the ashes, survivors Elara and Chayton lead their people to the Eno River, to Fort Christianna, and into a new identity as the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation. Based on real history - Occoneechee Island now lies beneath Kerr Lake / Buggs Island Lake - Currents of Change is Book 4 of the Lake Gaston Short Story Series but stands alone as a novel of resilience, leadership, and what endures after displacement