Rachel Lemoyne (Women of the West/Eileen Charbonneau) - Hardcover

When starting this book, I thought it would be about contrasting cultures, but was delighted that there are striking similarities between Irish and Choctaw peoples.  Mitakuye oyasin! (We are all related!)

Rachel LeMoyne, a mixed-blood Choctaw raised in a Presbyterian mission, knows that her calling in 1847 is to travel to Ireland to feed the starving people there with her own people's life-giving surplus corn.  But she never expected to find a husband among the hungry and grief-stricken people. Especially not a husband considered an outlaw by his English landlord for daring to grind the corn that Rachel brought.When she and Dare return to America as husband and wife, a new challenge awaits her: they must escape the authorities still searching for Dare.  But with the Irish, like the Blacks and Indians, deemed :unfit for liberty," and many establishments posting "No Irish Need Apply" signs, the only place to run is west, to the wild country beyond the Oregon Trail, promised to anyone who survives the journey.