Everville

Chapter One

Was, Is, and Will Be

It was hope undid them. Hope, and the certainty that Providence had made them suffer enough for their dreams. They'd lost so much already along the trail—children, healers, leaders, all taken—surely, they reasoned, God would preserve them from further loss, and reward their griefs and hardships with deliverance into a place of plenty.

When the first signs of the blizzard had appeared—clouds that had dwarfed the thunderheads of Wyoming rising behind the peaks ahead, slivers of ice in the wind—they had said to each other: This is the final test. If we turn back now, intimidated by cloud and ice, then all those we buried along the way will have died for nothing; their suffering and ours will have been for nothing. We must go on. Now more than ever we must have faith in the dream of the West. After all, they told each other, it's only the first week of October. Maybe we'll see a flurry or two as we climb, but by the time the winter sets in we'll be over the mountains and down the other side, in the midst of sweet meadows.

On then; on, for the sake of the dream.

Now it ... read full excerpt from: Everville ebook