Book excerpt: A stirring debut novel-of love, struggle, and savagery on America's colonial frontier- (Bernard Cornwell). They call her Dark Maggie for her thick black hair, but the name also has a more sinister connotation. As the lone survivor of an attack on her village, she was thought to be cursed, and unfit for marriage. Maggie is also gifted with quick wits and skilled in medicine, trained as a midwife. Venturing to the colonies as an indentured servant, she hopes to escape the superstitions of the old country, and find a home of her own. But what she discovers is a New World fraught with new dangers.