Homeland: Faber Stories

'You have to marry outside your clan,' she said. 'That's law. All the people we knew were Bird Clan. All the others were gone.'

When Gloria's great-grandmother, Green Leaf, left her home in the Hiwassee Valley of Tennessee, it was with a man on a stolen horse. She was one of the fugitive bands of Cherokee who'd resisted capture long ago.

Decades later, her family takes Great Mam on a road trip home, to a place now named Cherokee. This time they are the invaders - tourists - and the groundwork has been laid for them. Feather-clad "Indians" do a welcoming dance in a parking lot beside a teepee, and a mangy one-eyed buffalo is kept in a cage.

Great Mam doesn't leave the truck.

'I've never been here before,' she says.