In 1870, ten-year-old Adolph Korn was kidnapped by Indians. He thrived in the Comanches’ rough, nomadic existence, quickly becoming one of the tribe’s fiercest warriors. Forcibly returned to his parents after three years, Korn never adjusted to life in white society. He spent his last years living in a cave, all but forgotten by his family.
Then Scott Zesch stumbled upon his great-great-great-uncle’s grave. Determined to understand how such a “good boy” could have become Indianized so completely, Zesch traveled across the West, digging through archives, speaking with Comanche elders, and tracking eight other child captives from the region with hauntingly similar experiences.
With a historian’s rigor and a novelist’s eye, Zesch paints a vivid portrait of life on the Texas frontier in The Captured and offers one of the few nonfiction accounts of captivity.