The Spirit Lake Massacre and the Captivity of Abbie Gardner: (Expanded, Annotated)

Long considered one of the best of the captive narratives from the 19th century, Abbie Gardner's thrilling and graphic tale of her abduction by a band of Santee Sioux in 1857 will captivate you from beginning to end.

Barely 14 years old, her family was butchered before her eyes and she witnessed the deaths of two other women captives before her release by Chief Inkpaduta. Gardner suffered years of illness after her return to white culture but eventually made a successful and prosperous life with a family.

This book went through seven editions in her lifetime and she eventually purchased the cabin and property from which she was abducted and turned them into a tourist attraction. The cabin still stands today near Spirit Lake, Iowa.

Told from the view of a woman looking back three decades to her traumatic experience, Gardner used notes she had written down in the intervening years as well as public documents to produce a highly-readable and compelling narrative.