BACKLINER
It is a dangerous time for America. The years following the signing of the Constitution have been riddled with British aggressions aimed at breaking the will of the young government. Trade restrictions tear at its economy while British ships attack and kidnap Americans at sea, refusing to acknowledge their American citizenship.
Washington, Franklin, and Hamilton have died. Their inspired dream is now entrusted to their aged and war-weary peers and to the succeeding generations—men and women, born in liberty, who are prepared to sacrifice their lives in its defense.
But the divisive evils of greed, slavery, and class distinction cast a dark cloud over the promise “We the People,” even as war talk rattles the governing halls. America declares a war to reconfirm her independence . . . a war to protect her “more perfect union”: The War of 1812.
Some believe a more divine purpose awaits the Union in the wake of this war. Such seekers are Jed Pearson, the sensitive heir to both a large plantation and a mysteriously tainted family heritage, and Hannah Stansbury, the visionary woman whose family holds the key to the Pearson riddle.
Treacherous forces on both shores seek to manipulate the war’s outcome for their own purposes, ensnaring Jed and Hannah in dangerous intrigue during this pivotal moment in time when the ultimate definition of liberty is about to come to light.
Dark Sky At Dawn, the stirring first volume in the epic Free Men and Dreamers series, tells of the fascinating people, events, history, and spiritual reawakening that precede the compelling moment in time before the guns blazed and the light of the Restoration dawned on a new day.
Volume three,
Dawn's Early Light,
available
November 2009 |
Read the Prologue
from Volume One:
Calvert County, Maryland
Along the Patuxent River
November 1781
A dank fog hovered over the shores of Maryland’s Patuxent River as Jonathan Edward Pearson stepped from the wagon, awaiting the approach of the two men who would help him see to the painful task ahead. He stepped upon the shipping dock, the grand prize of his
entrepreneurial cunning, and shivered as he imagined the frigid bite of the icy water. He wondered how long it had been before her muscles had cramped, before her once-warm soul had become a frozen weight, drawn deep until her last watery gasp denied her a reprieve. He shook his head to remove her pale, blue image from his mind and peered back through the grayness at his home, one of the finest in the infant nation. None of it meant anything to him now.
He had fought in the Seven Years’ War and the Great Revolution, seen patriots die while traitors prospered, burrowing invisibly into the craw of the new nation, only to raise their foul heads some other day. None of that seemed as unjust or as agonizing to him as the news that awaited him upon his return from Yorktown the previous day.
Charles Kittamaqund, oldest son of his good friend, Chief Four Eagles, had come to his home and delivered the news.
“Nagadaan ikwe!” Charles Kittamaqund had stated earnestly as he pulled Jonathan all the way from the house to the dock. “Nagadaan ikwe!”
Jonathan took a moment to translate the Algonquian words.“Leaving woman?”
Charles had nodded vigorously, thumping Jonathan on the chest.“You leaving woman.”
It took several seconds for Jonathan to register Charles’s meaning. "My leaving woman?”
Again, Charles’s head bobbed vigorously. “I find. I bring.”
She’d been wrapped in a Piscataway blanket and laid in the tall grass by the thicket. Jonathan froze in his tracks, unable to believe the sight that set his body quivering. He knelt beside the body of the debutante whom he’d blamed for stealing his heart and tossing it back
when he was still an indentured school teacher. Her once-lovely face was river swollen and as pale as parchment. She wore a blue dress, the same shade as the one she had worn that far-off day when she’d irreparably broken his heart.
“She’s cursing me,” he remembered muttering under his breath as he’d scooped her small, stiffened form into his arms.
The rustle of grass brought Jonathan back to the present. He turned and saw his black-haired friend emerge, dressed in buckskin.
“Thank you, Charles,” Jonathan sighed with a weak smile. “Is the reverend coming?”
Charles shook his head. “I no see.”
Jonathan hung his head. “I didn’t really expect he would,” he admitted soberly.
The Indian and the British-born American unloaded a small, walnut coffin with the initials SBM and the date, 1781 A.D., inscribed into its lid. “Let’s dig here, near the dock where she left her note,” Jonathan instructed. Before they laid the coffin in the hole, Jonathan opened the lid and stared down at the still face. “I’ve dressed you in blue. It is how I remembered you in anger. Now it is how I will remember you in grief.” He lifted a locket from his vest pocket and gingerly touched the engraving, SABM. The M, added later, was slightly different from the other letters, and one sad laugh escaped Jonathan. “You made your point with style, dearest,” he said, slipping the locket back into his pocket. Then he closed and buried the coffin.
“You know our story, Charles. What would your shaman say if we were Piscataway?”
“Strong lodges make strong tribes. To weaken a lodge is an attack on a nation.”
“And what would the shaman do to someone who was a threat to your tribe?”
“Send bad magic.”
Jonathan grew quiet. “I’ve caused bad magic to fall upon our lodges, magic I cannot undo. Will you watch over them when I’m gone and help return peace to our lodges?”
Charles’s people were moving north, to the Delaware, and to honor this promise he would need to remain behind, alone. The Indian looked back at the anguished face of his father’s friend, a man who had brought peace between the white men and the Piscataway. He was now needed to bring peace to two lodges. A full circle . . . He lifted his face to his friend’s and nodded.
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