Publisher's Synopsis
Eleven-year-old Emmaline Gullege, called Emmy by her family, has an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and a keen eye. She explores the mountains and valleys around her home with a zeal that is rivaled only by that of her mother, Charity. Even the Civil War her country is embroiled in has not dampened her nor her mother's enthusiasm for exploration and the long rides they take on Kagali, her mother's horse, up to the waterfall where the Indian Princess Noccalula took her own life many years earlier. At the close of the war in the summer of 1865, her mother suddenly lies down and dies after receiving a mysterious letter from a man that came to visit her. Emmy can see her mother there in the cabin; therefore, refuses to believe that her mother is dead, even though her older brothers and sisters insist that she is. A meeting with an old Indian man named Two Feathers at her mother's funeral, who is supposed to be the Keeper of the Sacred Fire and her great-grandfather, thrusts Emmy into the mystical, spiritual world of her mother's native peoples, the Cherokee. Told by the old Indian that she must carry on her mother's duties and given the power of observation and shape shifting, Emmy is charged with the task of becoming the family "Ka no he ha Ka no Ge sdi," the Storyteller. She is supposed to remember and pass down her family's history and tell about their ancestors to the coming generations. However, her refusal to accept her mothers crossing launches her on a mission to find and talk with her mother by using the powers bestowed on her by her great-grandfather, Two Feathers, who is the Keeper of the Sacred Fires ashes. During her explorations, Emmy discovers a hidden path that takes her beyond the willow tree to a layer of the world that is much different from her own. That is when she discovers that her grandfather can travel between space and time and communicate with all peoples within those layers... will Emmy return to her world or will she find what she seeks Beyond the Willow Tree?
