J R Nakken

Jacey Cameron in the Lost State of Franklin J R Nakken

In this first Jacey Cameron adventure for middle-graders, the motherless 12-year-old heroine inherits what her grandmother told her was a magic necklace. It would on its own whim, Grandma confided, transport her back in time. Busy with her first year of middle school on Port Ransome Island in Washington state and not even half-believing her grandmother's tale, Jacey tucks the necklace box away in her top drawer. She continues to touch the cold wood each night as she promised and, not long after Grandma crossed over, the box was warm! Only then did it open and allow Jacey to put the necklace around her neck and goes to bed as she was instructed. She awakens in the 18th century, in the household of John Sevier, governor of the self-proclaimed State of Franklin. As the bound girl, Jane, she has charge of Sevier's several young children (there were sixteen in all), cards wool, does baby laundry by hand and continually polishes Bonny Kate Sevier's prized puncheon floors. Nancy Ward, the Blessed Woman of the Cherokee, enters the story early. She is a friend to John Sevier as well as a representative of her people, for her wisdom has told her that the whites will soon be "as grass in the meadow," and she strives for peace. At a Christmas gathering at John Crockett's (Davy Crockett's father) at the mouth of Limestone Creek, little Catherine Sevier is kidnapped by marauding Chickamauga warriors who also take Jane/Jacey who has come to look for the child. Their adventures for several weeks in the renegade indians' camp are the heart of the story, as is Nancy Ward's rescue of the two girls. True to Grandma's story, Jacey awakened in her own bed with the necklace back in its once more cold box. "But nothing came home with me, Grandma," she whispered as she looked around her room. "And I'm not sure I made a difference as you said I would."Only later did she find her memento of the Franklin trip, and learn in a history book what happened to John Sevier as six-times governor of Tennessee, in that land that once was Franklin.