The white man had burned their land, raped their women, and slaughtered their children. He had made them a nation of slaves, and those he could not enslave, he promised to destroy. The Apache had one hope: vengeance. Out of the scattered remnants of the Apache tribes rose a man whose cunning, ferocity, and genius for war- fare would make him their leader in a last tragic strug- gle for survival. The Apache gave him their arms, their strength, and their absolute devotion. The white man gave him his name: Geronimo! `Compelling. Can surely stand comparison with the best novels of Indian life we have -- with Frank Waters`s The Man Who Killed the Deer and N. Scott Momaday`s The House Made of Dawn,` writes Larry McMurtry in The New York Times Book Review. The Houston Post calls Carter`s work `startlingly beautiful, always engrossing...violent to the point of heartbreak.` Watch for Me on the Mountain, a dramatic novel based on the oral history of the Apaches, may be the truest history of the Apache Nation we will ever have. Forrest Carter`s authentic American storytelling voice has been heard before -- in his irresistible autobio- graphical novel of his Indian boyhood, The Education of Little Tree, and in his two Josey Wales novels -- Gone to Texas and The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales. He was storyteller-in-council to the Cherokee Nation. In Watch for Me on the Mountain, he returned to his own roots to create a masterpiece of American fiction. Forrest Carter died in 1979.