Okay, imagine your life has lived one way until you're eight years old.

Then you're kidnapped and adopted into a completely different society.

It happened to a little girl named Cynthia Ann Parker in the early 1800s.

How it all came down, what she went through as a child and then as a grown woman,

embracing a whole new identity

is mind-blowing.

I'm Patty Steele, kidnapped from a loving family not once, but twice.

That's next on The Backstory.

This is an I-Heart podcast.

The backstory is back.

All right, close your eyes and picture this.

It's a beautiful spring morning in May.

In what is now, Texas, it's 1836.

Cynthia Ann Parker, an eight-year-old with blonde hair and blue eyes,

is playing outside behind the gates built to protect Fort Parker, an eight-year-old with blonde hair and blue eyes, is playing outside behind the

gates built to protect Fort Parker, a settlement built by her grandfather several years earlier.

But every ordinary thing she's doing, every step, every breath, every chore, like

feeding chickens and helping with laundry and cooking, is about to change

forever. Suddenly, like out of nowhere, the morning is filled with noise, galloping horses, war

cries, screaming women and children, as hundreds of Comanche warriors and their allies materialized

from the tall grass and pour into the log

fort before there's even time to secure the gate. It happens like lightning. Cynthia's brother

...