Born on the Trail of Tears

Dream Bud

By: Charley Brindley

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

She was taken from her world… and thrown into another.

Kokuma was born during the second dry season of 1784, in the central African country of Ruanda. Her village, Ngarama, on the Kaginmba River, was just two degrees south of the equator. She was strong, proud, and free.

Then the raiders came.

Captured and sold into slavery, she survives the horrors of the Middle Passage and finds herself on a plantation in Georgia—where survival means obedience… or death.

But Kokuma refuses to be broken.

When she fights back and kills the two white men who would destroy her, she becomes a fugitive—hunted across a vast and unforgiving land.

Wounded, starving, and alone, she should have died.

Instead, she is found by Vahali—a young Cherokee warrior.

Among his people, Kokuma finds something she thought she had lost forever:

kindness… belonging… and love.

But history is closing in.

As the demand for land explodes and the United States turns its power against the Cherokee Nation, Kokuma is thrust into one of the most tragic events in American history—

The Trail of Tears.

Driven from their homes at gunpoint, her people must walk over a thousand miles through cold, hunger, and death.
And this time…

Kokuma is no longer running for her life.

She is leading others to survive.

From the award-winning author Charley Brindley comes an unforgettable story of survival, courage, and the unbreakable human spirit—set against one of history’s darkest chapters.