We’re delighted to bring you the next excerpt from upcoming Maps of Fate Book Two of the #1 best-selling, national award-winning Threads West American Saga series. The threads of the disparate lives of the vanguard of characters whom you’ve met and care for in Book One, Threads West, have intertwined, propelled by destiny to an unknown rendezvous with life, fate, each other and new characters to be introduced. They are the point of the spear in the great American westward migration of the mid 1800’s. The power, vastness, and energy of the land, the harsh realities of life in an untamed wilderness and a growing sense that they are part of something larger has begun to transform them, each in their own way internally and in their interactions laden with enmity, friendship, loyalty, and romance.
Revelation
From a Chapter of Maps of Fate—Book Two of Threads West, An American Saga
Rebecca drew up her skirt and shook her head at the tiny explosion of trail dust every time she touched the fabric. After checking carefully for cactus, she eased herself down into a small grassy nook between the boulders along the riverbank of the Missouri. The circle of wagons was not more than one hundred feet away.
Above the gentle murmur of river current where it caressed the shore, she could hear the crackle of the campfires, tired laughter, and the clang of stirring ladles chiming dully against the interiors of the great iron pots suspended from tripods as dinner was prepared. Occasionally, muted male voices cursed softly in unison with the snorts of horses and the low brays of oxen as men carried water buckets to the livestock.
A diffused steel-gray curtain of approaching dusk stole towards her like a phantom from the east, downriver, gradually swallowing the rolling gold of the gently waving prairie grasses. To the west, the last rim of retreating sun blazed in an orange glory, its fading rings of red, then crimson, then pale yellow bidding a farewell to the day in concentric arcs of flaming color.
The vastness, the emptiness, the sheer space enveloped her, and the promise of tomorrow etched in the direction of the dying sun stirred a feeling of excitement and promise deep in her core.
“I wonder how you are, Mother,” she said aloud, sighing reluctantly to the remnants of blue disappearing into the evening sky. She tried to remember her bedroom and the cobblestone street lined by similar stately row houses outside the great front door of their elegant London home. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the cooling breeze to focus on the memory, but the image remained fuzzy, as if from a long-ago dream.