The Hummingbird Wing

The Hummingbird Wing is both a love charm and a symbol of the soldadera who lost her life saving the man she loved.
Before the vast expanse of land from Texas to California became the American Southwest, it was Mexico. In the summer of 1847, as the U.S.-Mexican war is nearing its end, in an arroyo in central Mexico, two young sisters, Teresa and Cecilia Matías, are bathing near their family's farm. Miguel and Vicente, two trail-worn Mexican officers, childhood friends, one badly wounded and the other his escort, appear a bank of the river, traveling north to homes across the Rio Grande. After a short recuperation at the farm, the soldiers depart. Teresa dreams of Miguel for two years until, to avoid an unwelcome marriage, she runs away from home to become a nun. She is abducted, carried north to the border near the haciendas of the two soldiers, sold to a brothel, and offered as a mistress to a renegade general before a last minute rescue.
Teresa gradually becomes aware that Miguel is obsessed in a scheme of revenge against the four U.S. soldiers who raped and killed the young camp follower who tended his wounds on the battlefield and saved his life. How the Mexicans, suddenly become U.S. Texans, develop ties with the former enemy, resolve some of the conflicts and start new lives is a heart-wrenching and heartwarming story.