the Woman with Stone Knife

The Woman with the Stone Knife imagines the life of a Cherokee woman exiled for 20 years in Georgian England, torn between two worlds and two choices. Remain in London to avenge her husband’s death or reunite with the son she left behind in the Cherokee mountains. Helena Ostenaco Timberlake steps into history in 1786 when she petitions the British crown to return to newly independent America. Was she really the wife of a white soldier, Lt. Henry Timberlake, who had visited the Cherokee in 1762 and the daughter of the Cherokee war chief Ostenaco who had visited King George III. Widely researched and deeply imagined, The Woman with the Stone Knife follows the life of this mysterious woman. She was born Skitty in the Overhills towns of the Cherokee. Following Timberlake, Skitty leaves behind her infant son and makes the arduous Atlantic crossing, only to find herself abandoned in England after Timberlake’s death in debtor’s prison in 1765.