The view is incredible. The high Rockies stand all around.

“Jessica.”

I turn to find my dad holding the video camera. He always does this on vacation.

“Can you tell me where we’re at?” he asks.

I think about it for a second, and I can’t remember the name. I know it’s an animal. I look shyly into the camera. Wind blows hair into my mouth. I remove it.

“I don’t know,” I say.

Daddy chuckles. “We’re on Wolf Creek Pass.”

“Wolf Creek Pass,” I say with confidence now.

He chuckles again.

I turn to look out at the mountains and smile. They’re rugged and dangerous and beautiful.

My family took trips through the Colorado Rockies every summer for nearly eight years in a row. Every summer my dad would pack up our minivan, put the cargo carrier on top, sometimes haul a trailer, and up over the mountain passes we would go. Through Eisenhower Tunnel, over Monarch, over Wolf Creek, and through some of the most beautiful country I knew.

If you’ve read NONE, Chapter 10, “Competence,” this is the country I had in my head when Michael traverses the San Luis Valley with Mr. Bayless’ Silver.

I look at these pictures now with fondness and nostalgia. I remember mornings waking up to golden sunlight and hearing a meadowlark outside my window. In the late summer the grass would often already be dry, but in the mountains the weather was cool enough that we all wore sweatshirts and sweatpants to hike even in the middle of July.

The Uncompahgre River ran through the country where we visited family near Montrose. Blue Mesa was another regular stop, where my family would spend summer afternoons fishing. Some of my best memories are helping my cousin Rich gut fish, and then we would walk away with scales all over our shirts. It may have smelled terrible but they were shiny in the sun.

My favorite part, though, was the fact that my cousin was a Montrose County deputy sheriff. More than once he let us ride in the back of his squad car. He was the K-9 unit handler, and one of those German Shepherds actually ended up in our home when she was retired.

Those are the kinds of vacation memories that still bring a smile to my face.

And so I introduced my readers to them because I wanted the world to see what I knew about Colorado through Michael’s eyes.

I could spend hours describing the smell, the sound, the wind.

It was home.

In some ways it still is.

The way that the thunderheads move over the mountains in the afternoon, and it never fails to rain. A thirty-minute quick burst of shower before moving on. A day spent on the Blue Mesa of the Gunnison fishing. Cleaning those same fish and eating them for supper that night. It was where I fired my first rifle, built my first campfire and learned how to ride my first horse.

The history of that country fascinated me too. Mining shaped much of Colorado, and silver became enormously important in the San Juans. Before railroads made moving freight through those mountains easier, men and animals had to move supplies through incredibly difficult country.

In Michael’s time, that could mean mules and pack animals carrying hundreds of pounds of freight over harsh mountains.

That was the work.

It was also an easy place to get ambushed, which is why I picked it for Michael’s first real trial of competence.

And for his final trial I picked somewhere closer to where I live now: the Black Mesa country around Oklahoma, New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, and Texas.

I describe an isolated placita, a small settlement where Anglo and Hispanic families came together to run cattle. They were small outfits, often pressed by larger ranching interests that controlled huge swaths of land in that part of the West.

The other thing that interested me about that particular area is the fact that I travel it often with my family.

Since my husband’s mother lives in Amarillo, Texas, we will drive I-40 to Amarillo and then leave her house and drive the back roads up through Dumas, Texas, cross out of the Panhandle into New Mexico, and drive through Clayton.

This is one of my favorite drives.

That particular northeastern corner of New Mexico is still incredibly isolated, with land as far as the eye can see. You’ll often be driving and see a mesa in the distance, and the closer you get, it oddly seems to shrink in relative size to the mass its shadow casts.

Arroyos fill the land. What appears to be flat is actually a journey of ups and downs as you go down into canyons and then back up the other side. Scrub brush and mesquite are everywhere.

But some of the most interesting geological features are the volcanic cones.

In May, my husband and I took a trip up to Colorado with our children. On our way there, we noticed one of those cones that neither of us remembered seeing the last time we had driven through three years earlier.

That’s how isolated northeastern New Mexico actually is.

Clayton wasn’t even a town in Michael’s time. Today, it’s still a small town surrounded by miles and miles of open country.

The reason I picked that particular corner of New Mexico was because I knew it. I know how hot it gets in the Summer, and how cold it feels in the winter. I know the hiss of wind in dry grass and the call of a bird of prey. The stars out there are bold, big and bright. If wasn’t for the two lane highway, it would feel very much like stepping back into another era.

The other reason was jurisdiction.

Being from Oklahoma, I know the very, very curious history of the Public Land Strip.

In the 1880s, what is now the Oklahoma Panhandle was this strange strip of land without the ordinary territorial government surrounding areas had. It became known as No Man’s Land, and law enforcement there was complicated, to say the least.

This left a huge hole for criminals.

It was very easy for them to move through the isolated places where Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Texas, and the Public Land Strip came together, crossing jurisdictions and disappearing into miles of empty country.

The Black Mesa area was particularly isolated, and it would remain that way until the Public Land Strip eventually became part of Oklahoma Territory.

But in Michael’s time, it made sense to me why a placita being harassed by a gang of bandits would gather up their savings to hire guns to come fight a battle they were already losing.

And so that is why I placed Michael here, in this odd place of the literal Wild West.

And I suppose that is why NONE will be up there among one of my favorite books.

Because I get to introduce my readers to places I know well. Places I still travel.

One of these days, my family and I will absolutely stop and take a picture at the summit of one of those volcanic cones.

And hopefully my children will be able to say, like me,

“Oh, I’ve been there.”

It feels like home.

NONE, the tables of contents are here.

More on that later.

The Premise

Every new contract promised to be the last before he went home.

When rancher Michael Vincent rescues a young woman from the aftermath of a wagon train massacre, he never expects to find a home.

But a split-second decision, made while trying to secure their future, leaves another family without a husband and father. Michael begins to question whether he deserves a family of his own.

Rather than return home, he doubles down on the one thing he believes he can offer: provision.

Each new contract will be the last before he returns.

A tax bill. A hard winter. A collapsing barn roof. A growing herd. Another job. Another paycheck.

Another reason to stay away.

As the miles grow longer and the letters grow shorter, Michael must decide whether providing for the woman he loves is worth losing the life he is trying to build with her.

NONE explores the lie that a man’s worth lies only in what he can provide—and the redeeming grace of discovering the full power of his presence.

Editor’s Letter

A man who sees his only worth as a provider may never understand the full power of his presence.

This novella began as an idea nearly twenty years ago.

My father introduced me to spaghetti Westerns when I was young. I was named after Jessica in The Man from Snowy River, starring Kirk Douglas. I read my first Louis L’Amour when I was eight. Cowboy grit was part of our home.

When I was fourteen, I watched the 1960 version of The Magnificent Seven. Over the next two years, I watched that movie dozens of times.

One scene stayed with me more than any other.

Chico, the youngest of the gunslingers, challenges Vin by pointing out that his gun has given him everything he possesses. Vin responds by totaling up the rented rooms, hash-house meals, and passing acquaintances his gun has earned him.

Then comes the arithmetic that has stayed with me ever since:

“Home, none. Wife, none. Kids … none. Prospects, zero.”

That hesitation gets me every time because it is the hesitation of regret.

As a young adult, I decided to write a story inspired by The Magnificent Seven. I wanted to dedicate it to the man who shouldered the responsibility of staying to raise my sisters and me.

The Man to Whom the Book is Dedicated

Some men are born with the urge to roam and wander.

My father was such a man.

Growing up in north-central Pennsylvania, near the New York line, he left home at eighteen. He traveled to Colorado and began putting down roots, only to return east just as suddenly.

It was there that God got hold of his heart.

Salvation did not erase the wanderlust. Two years later, he returned to Colorado, where a Sunday school teacher asked how he felt about dating an older woman.

That woman was my mother.

Four years his senior, she caught his attention immediately. My father still says it was love at first sight.

He did put down roots. Yet growing up, I could see the tension in him—the desire to stay warring against the desire to move on. He never made any of us feel like a burden. He carried responsibility well.

But one thing he once said to my mother has stayed with me:

“Sometimes I feel like Charles Ingalls.”

Anyone familiar with Little House on the Prairie understands the comparison. Pa Ingalls was forever loading his family into a wagon and heading somewhere new—sometimes because circumstances demanded it and sometimes because something in him longed for the horizon.

My father eventually packed us up as well, moving our family from Colorado to Oklahoma when I was fourteen. There was land to be had, opportunity to pursue, and a different life to build.

But life did not change as much as any of us imagined.

The responsibilities remained. Bills still needed to be paid. A wife and three daughters still needed food on the table, clothes on their backs, and a roof over their heads.

There were hardships. There were good years. There were ordinary years.

The older I get, the more I realize that my father’s greatest expression of love was not found in grand gestures or dramatic sacrifices. It was found in the daily decision to stay.

To go to work.

To pay the bills.

To shoulder responsibility.

To keep showing up when no one was watching.

My father learned to stay.

Because he did, I learned what faithful leadership looks like.

And yet, staying is not always the same as being present.

For all my father’s faithfulness, I remember days when I would excitedly relay some part of my day or a discovery I had made, only to realize that he had not heard a word.

The infamous thousand-yard stare occupied our table like a force of nature. My father would break off his train of thought only long enough to pat the food on his plate into a tidy pile, take a bite, and then return to whatever occupied his mind.

I remember growing quiet, shrinking my thoughts, and learning when to talk to Dad and when to stay silent.

As a mother, I understand him better now.

My own mind constantly whirls with thoughts, from the time my eyes open in the morning until I go to sleep at night. Something that bothers me is that I, too, have inherited that thousand-yard stare—my mind a million miles away from the people I call home.

There are times when my children must physically grab me to get my attention.

This is not how I want them to grow up.

I want to be present as a parent.

What the Story Became

When I first began adapting Michael’s story into a serial, I had a beginning and an endpoint. But, as so often happens to me as a writer, the plot began to contain a larger truth than I originally intended.

I am not entirely sure how this happens. Nor am I entirely sure I land it every time I publish.

In fact, I am certain I do not.

I originally wrote Michael as a drifter who has to decide to stay. Somewhere between chapters eight and nine, however, I discovered that the true heart of the novella is the power of presence.

One might argue that staying and presence are the same thing. But the parent who must be called back to focus on the child standing directly in front of them proves otherwise.

Presence requires more than physical proximity.

It requires attention. Time. Energy. Thought.

It requires the discipline of turning our minds toward the people in front of us and loving them with more than the work we accomplish on their behalf.

So, if you read NONE and wonder where it is all heading, read it with this in mind:

We only get one lifetime to spend on the people we love.

Provision matters. Staying matters.

But neither can replace the gift of being fully present.

To read the serial start here.

Chapter 8: The Homesteader

“As it happens, it’s a simple job,” Peterson said, waving a hand. “I need a man to carry a proposal.”

Michael’s brow furrowed. “Proposal fer what?”

“Compensation.” Peterson folded his hands over the head of his cane. “My railroad is acquiring property near Lawrence, Kansas. Most of the homesteaders have accepted our terms. One has not.”

“How much?”

“Thirteen dollars an acre.”

Michael looked up.

Peterson nodded. “The others accepted ten. I increased the amount in hopes we might spare everyone unnecessary unpleasantness. My railroad prides itself on diplomacy. I have no interest in legal battles.”

The waiter arrived with Michael’s ribeye, an inch and a half thick and still sizzling from the grill. The smell of good hot beef filled the space between them. Michael waited until the waiter departed before picking up his knife and fork.

“That’s it?” he asked. “Ya just want me to deliver the proposal?”

Peterson smiled over the rim of his coffee cup.

“What did you think? That I intended to hire you to shoot someone?”

Michael shifted in his chair.

Peterson set the cup down. “No, Mr. Vincent. Railroads connect towns, bring commerce, and feed families. They also require land. I won’t pretend we’re not asking these people to move on, because we are. But thirteen dollars an acre will buy a man another homestead nearly anywhere in this country, with a house, livestock, and money left in his pocket besides. I consider that fair compensation.”

Michael studied his steak for a moment before cutting into it.

“Seems mighty generous.”

“I believe it is.”

Michael dug into his steak. The tang of the juice spread across his tongue as he chewed.

“Ya said four weeks.”

Peterson nodded. “Indeed, I did. Perhaps only three.”

Michael waited.

“Lawrence is five days from Denver in good weather. We’re coming into fall, so I’d rather promise four and deliver sooner. If the line were already finished, I’d simply put you on a railcar.” He smiled faintly. “Unfortunately, it isn’t.”

“Cuz of the homesteader?”

Peterson’s smile became almost apologetic.

“Indeed. Which is why I’m hoping to have this matter settled. With a little providence, you’ll still be home with your wife before Christmas.”

Michael considered that as he cut another piece of steak and chased it with a bite of baked potato. The meal really was excellent. Peterson had been nothing but generous.

“When do I leave?”

Peterson took another sip of his coffee and smiled.

“That’s the spirit, my boy. You can leave whenever you’d like. Though I imagine you’ll need an advance.”

Michael frowned.

Peterson spread a hand. “You’ll need a place to stay tonight. It won’t do to start for Kansas in the dark. And unless I’ve forgotten, you also wanted to send word to your wife.”

Michael nodded.

Peterson reached into his money purse, withdrew two twenty-dollar gold pieces, and laid them on the table.

Michael stared at them.

Peterson chuckled.

“Forty dollars now. The remaining sixty when the work is done.”

Michael did the figures in his head and blinked.

“A hundred dollars... to deliver a proposal?”

Peterson shrugged. “Unless you find the compensation lacking.”

Michael laughed once and shook his head.

“No, sir. As I said about yer offer fer the land, a hundred dollars seems more than generous fer ridin’ to Kansas and speakin’ ta one homesteader.”

“Excellent.” Peterson extended his hand. “Then we have an agreement.”

Michael reached across the table and took it.

“We have an agreement.”

They finished the meal talking of little consequence. Michael thanked the man for the meal, and left the restaurant whistling. .

~

Michael walked along the boardwalk on Colfax the next morning toward the Western Union office. The wind had turned sharp overnight and he pulled his Stetson tighter over his ears. Michael entered the telegraph office. A potbellied stove in the corner chased the chill from the room.

The young man behind the desk looked up.

“Can I help you, sir?”

Michael smiled.

“Need ta send a telegram ta Lander, Wyomin’.”

The clerk’s eyebrows rose.

“That’s a fair piece.”

Michael lifted his money purse.

“I’ve got the coin.”

The young man slid a pad of paper across the counter.

“Dollar for the first ten words. After that, you pay for each one.”

Michael frowned and put pencil to paper.

Sadie. Found work in Denver. I’ll be home by Thanksgiving. I’m sorry it’ll be later than I promised. The job pays well...

He stopped. Too many words. The pencil scratched back across the page.

Found work Denver...

He stared at the city name. Denver stayed. She needed to know where he was. He tried again.

Got robbed...

Michael frowned and struck it out. That would only worry her. He let out a slow breath. Writing a telegram shouldn’t be this hard.

The telegram took him nearly half an hour to write. It finally ended up at fifteen words.

FOUND WORK DENVER STOP

PETERSON RAIL SERVICE STOP

WIRING ADVANCE STOP

PAY OFF NEVELS STOP

HOME BY CHRISTMAS STOP

MICHAEL

He stared at the bottom of the page.

It felt cold. Impersonal. He sighed, lowered the pencil once more, and added two words.

With love.

It cost him a little more, but at least she would know he had wanted to say more than he could afford.

Michael handed the young man his message.

The clerk nodded as he counted the words.

“That’ll be two dollars and forty cents.”

Michael counted out the coins and slid them across the counter.

The clerk nodded once, then went to work, the telegraph key clacking out in Morse code everything Michael needed to say...

...and nothing he had wanted to.

~

Michael spent the rest of the morning resupplying. By the time he rode back to Peterson’s office, the clock over the entry read a quarter till eleven.

Peterson looked up from his desk and smiled.

“Ah, Mr. Vincent. Ready to depart, then?”

Michael nodded.

Peterson motioned toward a man dressed entirely in black.

“I’d like you to meet Britt Christensen. I don’t much care for sending a man out alone. Mr. Christensen will be traveling with you to Lawrence.”

Michael offered his hand.

“Good ta meet ya.”

Britt took it with a single shake.

“Likewise.”

It was all he said. Michael heard the cadence of a foreign accent in the man’s speech.

Peterson smiled.

“Well then, gentlemen, I’ll leave you to it. Do be careful. The weather looks as though it may turn.”

Michael glanced through the office window toward the low gray clouds gathering over the plains.

“Looks like snow.”

“Indeed.” Peterson nodded. “And if it does, don’t press on. Blizzards on the high plains are nothing to trifle with.”

Michael nodded once.

He already knew.

For just a moment his thoughts drifted to his father.

Then he pushed the memory away.

Outside, Britt untied the reins of his black gelding. Michael did the same with the bay.

“Think we can make Byers?” Michael asked, having studied the route while buying supplies.

Britt shrugged.

“Maybe. If the weather holds.”

Michael gave a low whistle out of habit, yet Tick did not come running. He smiled sadly to himself, hoping the old hound was already somewhere on the trail to Wyoming.

They turned east, riding down Seventeenth Street toward the edge of Denver.

“Christmas,” Michael murmured under his breath. “I’ll be home by Christmas.”

~

Michael and Britt reached Byers before the storm broke. They both took rooms in the tavern at the edge of town and ate dinner together at first in companionable silence.

Michael glanced over once at the bigger man.

“Yer not from the States,” he observed conversationally.

Britt shrugged.

“No. I was born in Europe.”

Michael nodded thoughtfully.

“My ma used ta show me places like that on a map, she was born there too.”

Britt shrugged. “Perhaps you have heard of my country. Croatia.”

Michael chewed his venison.

“That’s in the Austrian Empire, right?”

Britt’s eyebrows rose.

“Austria-Hungary now.” He tipped his head toward Michael, “you know it?”

Michael shrugged.

“Ma made me learn all the countries.”

Britt chuckled.

“Then you are better traveled than most of your countrymen.”

Michael laughed.

The two men finished the rest of their meal, with Britt telling Michael more of his homeland.

~

Two days later the weather cleared enough for the men to leave Byers. The roads were muddy and the trip was slow. By the time the pair had reached Salina, they had found the familiar camaraderie that came with a shared trail, and sleeping on the ground.

That night Michael ventured a conversation.

Michael poked at the fire with a stick.

“So why’d ya never start a family?”

Britt was quiet for a moment before answering.

“I would have liked one.”

Michael glanced up.

Britt shrugged.

“But it would not be fair.”

Michael frowned.

“Fair?”

“Today I’m riding to Kansas. Next month, New Mexico. Maybe Peterson sends me east. Maybe I do not come back at all.” He gave a small shrug. “Did not seem right to promise a home when I could not promise myself.”

Michael nodded slowly.

“Peterson keeps ya that busy?”

Britt smiled faintly.

“Sometimes.”

Michael studied him across the fire.

“Deliverin’ offers?”

Britt shook his head.

“No. Not those kinds of offers.”

Michael watched him another moment before understanding settled over him.

“Yer one of his protectors.”

Britt shrugged.

“Among other things.”

Michael studied the European in the fire light.

“Ya enjoy it.”

Britt shrugged pouring out the rest of his coffee. “It is a living.”

And with that he rolled into his bedroll, leaving Michael to stare into the fire.

~

Michael and Britt made Lawrence during the third week of November. A mix of industry and farmland, the town bustled even as snow flurries drifted lazily from a gray sky.

Britt nodded toward a boarding house farther up the street.

“We’ll stay the night. Talk to the homesteader tomorrow.”

Michael nodded. The hour was late. The farmer would be sitting down to supper by now. Michael felt his own fatigue in his bones.

~

Morning dawned bright and cold. The storm had passed without doing much damage.

Michael and Britt rode out to the property Peterson hoped to purchase a few miles outside Lawrence. Smoke drifted from the chimney. Two children chased each other through the thin blanket of snow while a woman hung laundry beside the cabin. Out front, a man split firewood.

The whole family looked up as the riders approached.

“Howdy,” Michael called.

The man rested both hands on the maul.

“State your business.”

Michael shifted easily in the saddle.

“We’re here on behalf of Mr. Peterson.”

“The railroad man?”

“Yes, sir.”

The homesteader glanced toward Britt.

“Him I know. You’re new.”

“Met Mr. Peterson in Denver. He asked me ta bring ya an offer.”

The man’s expression hardened. He jerked his chin toward his wife.

“Inside.”

She gathered the children without a word. The cabin door shut behind them.

Only then did the homesteader tell Michael exactly what Peterson could do with his offer.

Michael blinked.

“Ya haven’t even heard it.”

“Don’t need to.”

“Mr. Peterson’s offering thirteen dollars an acre.”

The man shook his head.

“My pa settled this land. Built that cabin with his own hands. My father and granddad are buried on that hill.”

He pointed behind the house.

“Three of my children too.”

Michael swallowed.

“I know what land means. I’ve got a homestead of my own. A wife waitin’ fer me in Wyomin’.”

“Then you ought to understand.”

“I do. That’s why I came myself.”

The man folded his arms.

“The land isn’t for sale.”

Michael drew a slow breath.

“Mr. Peterson asked me ta settle this fair.”

The homesteader’s eyes narrowed.

“It already is fair.”

“It is more than a good price.”

The man gave a humorless laugh.

“Still don’t move my family graveyard. It don’t move this house. I’m not selling.”

Michael stood quietly for a moment, searching for something else to say. There wasn’t anything.

The homesteader picked up his maul and drove it into another block of wood.

“Get off my land.”

Michael turned the bay without another word. As he and Britt rode back toward Lawrence, Peterson’s estimate of four weeks suddenly made a great deal more sense.

~

Michael and Britt returned to town and took lunch at a small café. Michael ordered the soup, but when it arrived, he only stared into it.

“You are troubled, my young friend.”

Britt’s voice finally broke through.

Michael looked up.

“I don’t get it. I mean... I do. The man’s got family buried there. I understand that. But it’s jest bones.”

He shook his head.

“Did ya see their clothes? His wife was hangin’ laundry in a shawl. The little boy’s ankles were showin’. The house needs a new roof. Givin’ up that kind of money...”

He let out a slow breath.

“For bones.”

Britt remained quiet for a long moment, taking another spoonful of soup before he answered.

“Where I come from, all the land belongs to the king.”

Michael looked up.

“I came to America because a man could own his own land. Sounds to me like that fellow’s father came for the same reason.”

Michael nodded slowly.

“I know.”

He rubbed a hand across his jaw.

“Thirteen dollars an acre would put me and Sadie closer to Fort Bridger. I’d have enough left over ta build a proper herd. Maybe even hire a hand.”

Britt nodded.

“You see the value in the offer.”

He paused.

“He sees the value in never having to leave.”

Michael finally lifted his spoon and took a sip.

“Maybe.” Another spoonful. “Still think he’s a fool.”

~

The weather had not improved the next morning. The sky was once again the color of steel, a bitter wind blowing out of the north.

He hadn’t told Britt where he was going.

Perhaps without the larger man beside him, the homesteader would listen.

Homesteader to homesteader.

He rode into the yard.

The cabin door opened. The man stepped onto the porch.

“I thought I told you to get off my land.”

Michael settled the bay.

“I came ta talk.”

“You came to trespass.”

“Mr. Peterson’s offering thirteen dollars an acre. That’s a fair price.”

“I don’t care if he’s offering a hundred.”

The man’s voice stayed flat.

“My family is buried on that hill.”

Michael glanced toward the rise behind the cabin.

“I know.”

“Then ride away.”

Michael hesitated.

“Ya won’t see money like this again.”

The homesteader took one step off the porch.

“Are you deaf?”

Michael felt his jaw tighten.

“I’m trying ta help ya.”

“Help yourself.”

Silence settled between them.

Michael looked at the weathered roof, the patched barn, the woodpile already running low.

Thirteen dollars an acre. What he wouldn’t have given for an offer like that.

He nodded once.

“I came ta do a job.”

As he turned the bay toward the road, the man’s voice followed him.

“Does your wife know what kind of work you took?”

~

Michael rode the mare back to Lawrence.

Does your wife know what kind of work you took?

The question rolled around in his head. He hated it. Despised it. He had taken the work to keep a roof over his wife’s head, yet he could not shake it. He wasn’t entirely sure Sadie would be proud of what he was doing.

But he didn’t want to dwell on that.

Michael returned to Lawrence in time for lunch. He ate a bowl of stew, then instead of finding Britt, went upstairs. Using paper and an inkwell, he began drafting a letter to Sadie.

She deserved to know why he had found work in Denver instead of coming home.

He spent the better part of the afternoon composing the draft.

Dear Sadie,

I wish the circumstances were not what they were. After five weeks on the trail, the money from the cattle was stolen from me in Denver.

He frowned.

To remedy the situation

Michael stared at the line. He felt dumb just writing it. He scratched it out.

With the tax bill due, I accepted work with the railroad.

There.

That sounded better.

I am in Lawrence, Kansas. If you need to get a hold of me, please feel free to use some of the money to wire Denver. I am hoping to be back there by Christmas. In the meantime, know that I am thinking of you, eager to taste your beef stew and once again be in your company. I will return as soon as I am able.

With all my love,

Michael

He sanded the ink, blotted the page, folded it into an envelope, and walked downstairs. The post office stood only a short walk away. He mailed the letter before crossing the street to the saloon.

Britt looked up from his supper as Michael slid into the chair across from him.

“We’re going out there again,” Michael said.

Britt raised an eyebrow.

“This offer is his family’s ticket out livin’ hand ta fist.”

Britt shrugged.

“Not sure it’ll make much difference.”

“Maybe not.”

“We’ll go.”

That night Michael dreamed of Sadie.

She stood across from him, her eyes filled with disappointment.

“Are you really all right with running a man off his land?”

Michael woke in a cold sweat. He scrubbed a hand down his face before rolling over and pulling the blanket higher.

“I’m keepin’ a roof over her head,” he whispered into the darkness.

“That’s all this is.”

~

The sky was the color of slate and the clouds appeared just as cold the next morning. Michael and Britt rode once more toward the homesteader’s place. They had scarcely crested the hill leading down into the little bowl where the cabin sat before the homesteader motioned his wife and children inside.

Michael didn’t miss the shotgun leaning against the chopping stump.

The man folded his arms.

“Trespassing again, I see.”

Michael leaned forward in the saddle.

“I’ve come to make sure you understand. How good an offer this really is.”

The man shrugged.

“Could be thirteen hundred. Wouldn’t change my mind.”

Michael sighed, his eyes drifting to the cabin where two children pressed their faces against the window.

“Yer holdin’ on ta bones.”

The homesteader’s jaw tightened. Along with his fists. Michael continued anyway. The man needed to hear this.

“It would do more good servin’ the livin’ than the dead.”

That did it.

The man’s face flushed crimson.

“Don’t do it,” Britt warned.

But it was already too late.

The homesteader lunged for the shotgun.

Before Michael could think, his Colt was already in his hand.

It barked three times.

Silence crashed over the little homestead.

Then the cabin door burst open. The woman sprinted toward her husband.

“No!”

Her cry echoed across the hills.

“Ian! No!”

Michael blinked.

The man had been reaching for the shotgun.

But this...

He looked down into the pale face of a man now dead.

Six weeks ago...

That was me.

He holstered the Colt and hurried forward.

The widow gathered her husband’s body into her arms.

“Don’t touch him!” she snapped.

Michael stopped.

He scrubbed a hand down his face.

“He was going for his gun.”

“You murdered him.”

Michael’s shoulders slumped. His hands hung limp at his sides. He turned and walked back to his horse.

“Make sure she gets the money,” he told Britt.

Without another word, he mounted the mare and rode away, the cries of the newly made widow following him long after the homestead disappeared behind the hills.

~

Michael rode back into Lawrence seeing nothing but the blood on the widow’s hands.

He climbed the stairs to the boarding house two at a time. The door shut with a loud click behind him. He sat heavily on the edge of the bed and turned toward the window, listening to the noises of the street below.

He took a shaky breath, leaned forward onto his elbows, and buried his face in his hands.

“I killed him.” The words came out barely above a whisper. “I didn’t want ta... but I killed him.”

Gorge rose in his throat. He lurched for the chamber pot in the corner, his breakfast coming back up.

When he was finished, he wiped his mouth and crossed to the washbasin. The man staring back from the mirror looked older than he had that morning.

A knock sounded at the door.

Michael stiffened.

Had the law already come?

He stepped quietly to the door.

“Michael. It’s me. Britt.”

His shoulders eased. He opened it.

Britt stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

“Came to make sure you were not about to do something stupid.”

Michael eyed him. “I’m leavin’.”

“Like that.” Britt’s voice was flat.

Michael frowned.

Britt considered him, then clicked his tongue.

“He reached first, but the law is gonna have questions.”

Michael blinked, and his stomach lurched.

Britt reached for the doorknob.

“You need to ride down to the county seat and make sure they hear it from you first.”

Michael’s hands balled into fists.

“If they’ll believe me.”

Britt raised an eyebrow.

“The homesteader is dead. His widow will testify against you. I have already telegraphed Peterson.”

Michael looked at him in disbelief.

“Ya think he’ll help?”

Britt nodded.

“He will want this settled quiet and fast.”

Michael closed his eyes.

“Sounds like ya’ve done this before.”

“Yeah.” It was all the man in black said.

Michael looked up.

“Fine, but I am not lyin’ fer anybody.”

Britt met his eyes.

“No one is asking you to. Tell it like it happened and Peterson will see to the rest.”

Michael reached for the door, feeling like a prisoner already.

Thank you so very much for taking the time to read my work. If you like fiction that shows real life, redemption and the Narrow Road, I would love to hear from you in the comments. Better yet, share my work with others, and help me grow.

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The Sower

The sky turns from gray to blue as pink lines the underside of the clouds on the horizon. Out in the field, headlights carve a swath of light through the darkness where nighttime insects still play. The farmer is already at work, the rumble of the seat beneath him, the scrape of the discs cutting through the soil.

It’s planting season.

And in that field lies the hope of a man who kissed his wife on the forehead before leaving home this morning, who quietly opened the doors to his children’s bedrooms one last time before stepping into the dawn.

Because of his labor, his community might eat this summer.

Might.

Because in farming there are no guarantees. There is only faithful stewardship.

The Heart

There is a certain vulnerability in every calling. Farming. Parenting. Discipling. Ministry. Publishing. They all ask something of the person who undertakes them. They all cost something.

And I have often wondered if that is why Scripture describes calling the way it does. A calling, not as a passing interest, but as a fire. Jeremiah said God’s word was “like a burning fire shut up in my bones.” He tried to hold it in, but he couldn’t. Some things are simply planted too deeply in a person’s soul to ignore.

This is the story of where my “fire” originated.

Like many writers, my calling began as a reader.

My mother handed me books long before I ever picked up a pen. Gilbert Morris. Al Lacy. Janette Oke. Later I discovered Dickens, Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, C. S. Lewis, Marguerite Henry, and eventually Homer, in our local library.

As my reading expanded, so did my appetite for stories excellently crafted. Stories which wove such an allegory of theology that the author did not have to spell out the gospel, because it was already woven in.

I found myself drawn to stories that carried spiritual weight, made their characters sit in the complexity of real life, and sucked me in because the writer knew their craft forward and back. Or at the very least had wonderful editors who helped them navigate their own blind spots.

When I discovered authors like Rivers, Peretti, Dekker, James and Lawhead, I devoured every book they wrote, not because I was looking for less faith. I was looking for fiction that trusted the story to carry the faith.

Then I started writing for myself, and somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t simply passionate about writing stories. I was passionate about craftsmanship.

I want Christian fiction to stand on the same shelf as the finest novels being published anywhere—not because it imitates the world, but because it refuses to settle for anything less than what our King deserves. The gospel deserves our best work. Our readers deserve our best work. Our readers deserve books, honed, crafted and stewarded well.

That doesn’t mean every story has to appeal to every reader. White Harvest isn’t trying to replace any voices.

It is simply trying to raise the bar for the kind of stories we tell.

At the heart of White Harvest Media is a conviction that has been growing in me for years: because we serve the Author of truth, Christian storytellers should pursue excellence with relentless humility. Our stories should be evocative, professionally crafted, emotionally honest, nuanced, and deeply meaningful. Not despite our faith, but because of it.

Every story White Harvest tells or imprints, should carry with it a feeling of worship, every story should be first a sacrifice of love, as a gift to the God who saves.

The Vision

The vision behind White Harvest Media is not genre. It is conviction.

White Harvest is an imprint that isn’t interested in championing one genre over another. It is interested in stories that cultivate virtue.

• Courage.

• Sacrifice.

• Honor.

• Duty.

• Protection.

• Diligence.

• Stewardship.

At the heart of each of those virtues lies conviction.

Whether a novel explores Scripture directly, reimagines a biblical principle through fantasy, examines history, or simply views ordinary life through a distinctly Christian lens, every White Harvest title should leave its readers with a clearer picture of what is true, good, and worth sacrificing for.

Those virtues are not confined to fantasy, westerns, thrillers, historical fiction, or any other shelf in a bookstore. They transcend genre, book types, podcasts, and film because they are rooted in the human condition itself. Whether the story is fiction, non-fiction, devotional or doctrinal expose, the theme should show truth and craftsmanship.

Many gifted authors are already writing stories that call readers toward virtue. White Harvest doesn’t exist because those books don’t. It exists because I believe readers are hungry for more of them.

Genre and media are flexible.

Conviction isn’t.

The Community that makes Stewardship Possible.

Like a field planted one row at a time, White Harvest began with the stories I could tell.

The first was Jessica Hopson.

The Songs of Redemption is a fantasy series written more like a symphony than a traditional saga. Each novel is its own movement. Every story stands alone, yet every one deepens the whole. By the time the series is complete, I hope readers will be able to begin almost anywhere and still find themselves drawn into the larger story of redemption. Every book points back to the God who sees the broken, pursues them, and redeems them.

I chose that series because, more than anything else I’ve written, it embodies what White Harvest exists to do.

But Jessica Hopson was never meant to be White Harvest Media. I am simply the first voice.

This fall, White Harvest introduces its second voice: N. Kipling.

If Jessica asks what happens when systems break people, Kipling asks a different question:

What do people do when systems break?

Different voice. Different genre. Different style.

The same conviction.

That’s why I called it White Harvest Media instead of Jessica Hopson Publishing.

When Jesus looked across the fields, He said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”

That image has stayed with me.

White Harvest was never intended to become a monument to my own story-telling. It was always meant to become a gathering place for laborers.

I want to find writers whose stories are marked by conviction. Editors who love craftsmanship. Designers who understand story. Cover artists who capture wonder. Readers who hunger for truth told well.

Because the vision has never been about building a platform, where I am the only speaker. It has always been about cultivating a community.

My cousin does my cover art. A wonderful artist in my church is hand-painting the cover art for Quinn’s Return. Kipling writes systems. I have dear friends who beta read.

This is why White Harvest Media is on Substack, and I cultivate active relationships with other authors, and feature books outside of the imprint.

Books and Children require a village.

In my mind, that village looks something like this.

A place where writers find other writers who encourage them, sharpen them, and remind them to keep going when the work feels too heavy.

A place where editors delight in craftsmanship and help authors tell the story they were trying to tell all along.

A place where writers discover editors who understand their voice, their genre, and even their personality.

A place where designers collaborate, formatters quietly elevate a reading experience through details most people never notice, and cover artists create the kind of covers that make someone reach for a book before they’ve read a single word.

A place where readers discover hidden gems they never would have found otherwise—stories tucked away off the beaten path that deserve to be read.

That’s the White Harvest I hope to build.

A guild.

A community of craftsmen who believe stories matter, who believe excellence honors both the reader and the Creator, and who are willing to put in the long, often unseen work that great storytelling requires. Be it book form, a podcast or yes, even films someday.

Underpinning it all are readers who hunger for stories that tell the truth with conviction, and redemption in Jesus as the goal.

The Why

Why does a village matter?

Think of White Harvest as the field. The laborers in it are the people who call the village home.

Why is that village so important?

Because I’ve noticed that many of the most ardent creators are people who have been deeply wounded themselves. Suffering does not automatically equate artistic ability, but in the humbling experience of brokenness are often found the ingredients to make us better observers of people and the world around us.

I also believe we are more beautiful when God pours gold into our cracks. More often than not, He chooses to do that through other people. We are healed in community. Sharpened in community. Encouraged in community. That’s why the village matters.

Along with being a wife and homeschooling mom, I hold a degree in trauma counseling. Recently, my church launched a chapter of Wounded Spirits, a ministry that serves active-duty military, veterans, first responders, and others who have walked through traumatic experiences, pointing them to the hope found in Jesus Christ.

Because that mission has become so close to my heart, ten percent of every dollar White Harvest Media nets goes directly to support that ministry at my church.

White Harvest is also privileged to be working with a veteran to share his memoir of serving as an EOD technician in Afghanistan—a story of God’s faithfulness, His protection, and His grace during one of the deadliest periods of the war for improvised explosive devices. It has been an honor to help tell that story.

Perhaps that’s why so many of my own characters are broken before they are redeemed. I don’t believe brokenness is beautiful. I believe redemption is. I’ve watched God pour gold into cracks the world assumed would never heal, and more often than not, He has done it through people who simply chose to stay.

It is my prayer that the stories planted through White Harvest encourage weary hearts, strengthen conviction, and quietly remind readers that redemption is still possible. Not because fiction can replace Scripture, it never can, but because stories have always helped us recognize truth when we encounter it. If a book leaves someone with a deeper relationship with the God who sees and redeems, calling us to courage, sacrifice, and forgiveness, then it has done more than entertain. It has served its purpose.

The Legacy

What happens after I’m gone?

When I started White Harvest Media, I intended it to be an intergenerational project. It was never meant to revolve around me forever.

In college, I was privileged to study under a history professor we all affectionately called Coach Thomas. At the end of nearly every lecture, he would look at us and say, “Remember, kids, the best way to spend your life is to invest it in something that will outlast it.”

I’ve carried those words with me ever since.

Over the years, God has given me the privilege of being a teacher, a counselor, a wife, a homeschooling mom, a leader in my church, and now an author and the founder of White Harvest Media. Each calling has taught me something about stewardship.

But I don’t want White Harvest to end with me.

Whether one of my children someday takes up the work, or someone I’ve had the privilege of discipling in Jesus, in craftsmanship, and in the importance of community, my hope is that White Harvest continues long after I’m gone.

I want it to become the kind of imprint that quietly earns a reader’s trust. A place known for excellence. A publishing hybrid where truth is handled carefully, craftsmanship is taken seriously, and conviction matters more than trends.

I hope one day a reader will pick up a White Harvest book written by an author they’ve never heard of and think, If White Harvest published this, it’s worth my time.

That has always been the dream.

White Harvest Media was never my dream because I wanted to own a publishing company. It wasn’t because I wanted to make a fortune or become a bestselling author.

It became my dream because I wanted to leave behind more than books.

I wanted to leave behind a place where courage is celebrated, where redemption still costs something, where truth is spoken with precision and in love, and where every story reminds us that the narrow road is still worth walking.

If, years from now, someone picks up a White Harvest book from an unknown author and trusts it simply because of the name on the spine, I’ll know the field has begun to bear fruit.

And even if I never live to see that harvest, I’ll keep planting.

One story.

One reader.

One relationship.

One faithful step at a time.

Because that’s what stewardship looks like.

Share the Harvest. If this vision resonates with you, help another reader discover White Harvest.

Share White Harvest Media

Join the Harvest. Are you a writer, editor, designer, cover artist, formatter or other creator who shares this vision? I’d love to hear from you.

What kind of stories stay with you long after you’ve close the book? Tell me below in the comments, I truly love to hear from my readers.

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Despite the calendar saying the 13th of November, the Denver stockyards were warm. The air was choked with dust, and the noise of drovers shouting. Cattle bawled, as hundreds of beasts were moved through pens. The cacophony of industrial machines up Elyria Street at the canning facilities was enough that Michael had to shout to Rockwell to be heard over the din.

The noise of the large city grated on Michael’s exhausted nerves. He signaled Tick to herd the four healthy yearlings into the pen indicated by the foreman. Two of his steers had crossed Red Desert poorly, and Michael doubted he was going to get more than canning prices for them. The smell from the canneries turned his stomach. A haze from coal fire and steam settled with the dust. Michael turned his face back to the men in the pen sorting his cattle.

He dismounted from the mare and called Tick. That was when he caught a glimpse of himself in the window of a nearby building. He hardly recognized himself. His beard had filled in, his face was browned from the sun, and dust covered him from head to toe. Michael stepped back, flinching at his own appearance. He licked his teeth and lips, before spitting the silt into the dust at his feet. Tick sat, leaning against Michael’s leg, tongue lolling.

Michael watched the drovers sort the little herd he had brought. Numbers were called but he had little understanding of what they meant. After what seemed an eternity the foreman approached him.

“What’s today’s prices?” Michael asked.

The foreman checked his sheet. “I can likely give you seventeen a head for the four healthy ones, but the two sick? Maybe seven?”

Michael frowned, “That’s long yearlin’ Angus.”

The foreman shrugged. “If they’d have been corn-fed, you’d have gotten more. But these here grass-fed ones? Cain’t offer that much.”

Michael nodded. “Alright, I’ll take what ya can give me”

. The man nodded his head and handed Michael a green slip of paper.

“Take this over ta the cash shack. They’ll set ya up right.”

“Much obliged,”

Michael took the sheet of paper, folded it and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

“Come on, boy,” he said, tapping his thigh once. Tick followed behind, tail wagging.

Michael made his way to the cashier’s shed, a ramshackle building at the edge of the stockyards. A man in a green visor with rolled shirt sleeves chewing on an unlit cigar looked at him through the window.

“What can I do ya fer?”

Michael pulled the green tally sheet from his pocket and handed it to the cashier.

“ I brought six in from Lander.”

The man looked over the paper and squinted. “Well after feeding fees and the pen fee, that’ll be seventy-three dollars and sixty-one cents.”

Michael stared at the numbers feeling personally insulted.

Five weeks of work, five weeks of sleeping on the ground, five weeks of missin’ my wife.

He slowly lifted the grease pencil to sign for his coins and cash. It would have to be enough. He knew, back home, Nevels would already be tacking on interest.

The cashier handed him the money in a canvas sack. Michael tipped his hat before gathering the bay’s reins in his hand. His mind already whirling with the figures against the supplies he still needed to obtain before he could return home.

He and Wyatt had done without for years, and Sadie didn’t complain, but she needed a new coat for winter, and she had mentioned curtains.

Rockwell met him by the pens.

“You look like someone stole Tick.”

Michael lifted his head. “Jest didn’t get as much as I was wantin’”

Rockwell nodded, “Yeah, it’s tough.”

He clapped Michael on the shoulder, “There is a stable at the end of the row. Cost a nickel to board the mare for the night. The boys and I are headed to Market for a drink, you comin’?”

Michael considered, He needed to get to the bank to wire the funds to Sadie, but the sun was still high enough.

He shrugged, “I got a few minutes..”

Rockwell grinned, “Good man.”

~

The sights and sounds of Market street were a different beast from the stockyard, less dusty, but no quieter. Even at the early afternoon hour the sound of competing saloons, cat-calls, shouts and the whistles of men filled the air.

The group entered a darkened building, Rockwell ordered a bottle of cheap rye for the group. Michael passed on the liquor instead ordering a cup of coffee for himself.

Rockwell leaned forward, raising his glass. “it was a good drive gentlemen, the cows made it, we made it, here is to success.”

The others raised their drinks. Michael followed suit.

The conversation turned to supplies, the fact they were glad the drive was over, and the long trip home.

Michael looked up to see the shadows lengthening into early evening outside, and stood.

“I need to get goin’, I gotta wire money afore the bank closes.”

Rockwell stood with him.

“You headed out with us in the mornin’?” The older cowboy asked.

Michael shook his head, “I’ve got supplies ta get.” He paused. “But if yer headed home. Would ya take Tick?”

Rockwell froze just inside the saloon doors.

“Yer sure?”

Michael shook his head. “I can’t be draggin’ him all over town. I’ll catch up in a couple of days.”

Rockwell shrugged. “Well, suit yerself.”

They stepped out on the boardwalk together, and Michael called to Tick. The dog jumped up from where he’d been waiting by Michael’s mare and walked over with a wagging tail and outstretched tongue.

Michael knelt and rubbed the dog’s ears. “Yer goin’ home boy.”

Tick’s mouth closed at the word home. He tilted his head and whined.

Michael smiled sadly, “Go home, I need ya lookin’ after Sadie.”

The dog whined once again, and Michael signaled him with the low whistle for home. Tick tucked his tail and Rockwell tapped his thigh,

“Come on, Tick.”

The dog turned to obey, then looked back and Michael, who signaled once more.”

Tick lowered his head. Before Rockwell slipped a rope through the dog’s collar.

Michael watched Rockwell pull Tick behind him. The dog was not happy. Neither was his owner. There was no sense in dragging the hound through the streets of Denver.

“I’ll catch up,” Michael said under his breath.

Tick turned to look at him once more before a tug on the lead rope from Rockwell pulled him forward.

Michael turned. The shadows had already grown longer. He would be rushing to get to the bank now.

He headed south along Market Street, passing taverns, saloons, gambling halls, coffeehouses, and the sort of establishments that, now that he was married, held no interest for him. The thought of Sadie tugged at him. He would need to send her a telegram, tell her he would miss the six weeks he had promised, that he was sorry, and that he would make it up to her. Then he would have to keep that promise by finding something worthy of taking home.

Since he was in a hurry, Michael stopped a man on the boardwalk.

“Excuse me. Do ya live here in Denver?”

The man eyed him, then nodded slowly.

“What’s the quickest way ta Seventeenth Street?”

The man hiccupped, then shrugged.

“Cut through the bottoms, I reckon. Right through the rail yard. Best chance ya got.”

Michael nodded, thumbing the brim of his hat.

“Much obliged.”

The man tipped his own hat and continued in the opposite direction.

The rail yard lay downhill from Market Street, crowded with freight cars, locomotives, and coal tenders. The shadows were deeper here, and the place felt like a different world from the noise and bustle above.

Gravel crunched beneath Michael’s boots as he passed between two coal cars.

He had just rounded the corner.

“Hands up where we can see ‘em.”

Michael froze.

“Turn around. Nice and slow.”

He did, the money bag still clutched in one hand.

Two men stood with bandanas pulled over their faces and pistols leveled at his chest.

“Give us the money,” one of them said. “Whatever valuables you got. We’ll let you walk.”

At first Michael’s grip tightened on the money bag. This was his ticket home, the only way he could keep the ranch.

Then the younger gunman flinched, jerking his pistol toward Michael.

Michael didn’t think.

The money bag dropped from his hand with a clank as his own hand went with it.

“He’s reaching!” the older robber shouted.

Flame burst from the younger man’s muzzle. The bullet went wild richocheting off a railcar further up the track.

Michael’s Colt cleared leather.

His shot echoed through the rail yard. The younger man clutched at his chest.

The older robber fired.

Michael ducked instinctively. The ball slammed into the wooden side of the coal tender behind him.

His trigger finger squeezed again. The older man rocked backward, striking the railcar before crumpling to the ground.

Ringing swallowed every other sound.

That’s when Michael saw him.

A third man burst from the shadows, snatched up the money bag, and disappeared into the darkness.

Michael stood frozen, his head feeling as though it were underwater. Somewhere in the distance a whistle shrilled. He looked up just in time to see a Denver police officer sprinting toward him.

Smoke curled from the muzzle of Michael’s Colt. He stood frozen, blinking, his heart hammering against his ribs. He felt sick. Not because he had shot the men. Because someone had taken the money.

A hand seized his arm.

Michael jerked, dropping the Colt into the gravel.

A Denver police officer motioned toward the two men lying motionless, blood pooling beneath them in the fading light. The officer said something, but all Michael heard was the ringing. He blinked hard until the words finally broke through.

“They were trying to rob me,” Michael said.

The officer frowned.

“Son, this don’t look good for you. Don’t look good at all.”

“I’m telling ya, they were trying to rob me.”

“Rob you of what?”

Michael looked down.

The money bag was gone.

“There was a third man.”

The officer studied him for a long moment.

“Son, I think you’d best come with me.”

“Hold there. I saw the whole thing.”

The deep voice rolled out from between the tracks.

A man stepped into the lantern light beside a giant dressed in black. His waistcoat was finely tailored, his bowler hat spotless, and his polished shoes looked untouched by the grime of the rail yard.

The officer straightened.

“Mr. Peterson. You saw it?”

Peterson dipped his head and lifted the gold-knobbed cane in his hand, pointing it toward Michael.

“I did. Those two got the jump on the young fellow. There was a third as well. He grabbed the money and ran while these two kept his attention.”

The officer glanced toward the darkness where the thief had disappeared.

Peterson continued.

“I’ve seen lawmen slower on the draw. This young man would be lying there otherwise.”

Michael wasn’t entirely sure he’d heard him correctly. His ears still rang, and his hands had begun to tremble.

The officer sighed and crouched beside the dead men, pulling the bandanas from their faces.

“Well, I’ll be.”

He looked up at Peterson.

“One of these fellas has a wanted notice hanging in the office.”

He looked back down and shook his head.

“Ten-dollar reward... but it was for bringing him in alive.”

“Shame,” Peterson said. “I will however provide a statement to the proper authorities, this man is innocent.”

The officer nodded, then turned back to Michael. “Come on, son, I’ll get your statement at the station.

~

Michael entered the brick building which had DENVER CITY HALL carved into the stone above the doorway. A clock ticked steadily on the wall. Wooden desks filled the room.

The officer sighed.

“Well, I reckon I’d best get your statement tonight. You’re claiming self-defense. We’ll see what Mr. Peterson has to say. If he corroborates your story, you’re one lucky fella to have had a witness.”

Lucky.

The word did not fit what Michael was feeling.

He swallowed.

“Could I trouble ya for some water?”

The officer glanced at him, then called across the room.

“McKenzie! Get our guest a cup of water.”

The younger officer looked up from his desk, rolled his eyes, and stood with an exaggerated sigh before disappearing into the back.

Peterson settled into a chair, pulled a legal pad from his satchel, and dipped his pen into an inkwell.

“Take it from the top, son.”

Michael told them about arriving at the stockyards that morning, boarding his mare, and selling his cattle.

“Seventy-six dollars.”

His hand pressed into the edge of the desk.

He still couldn’t believe it was gone.

“It was everything I had. It was supposed ta save the ranch.”

The officer’s lips pressed into a thin line.

“And these two got the jump on you down in the Bottoms?”

Michael nodded, replaying it again.

“Yeah. Told me to put my hands up... turn around slow. I didn’t want to give ‘em the money, so I hesitated, and then...” He swallowed. “That’s when the gun went off.”

Almost as if on cue, McKenzie set a cup of water on the desk.

Michael looked up.

“Thank ya.”

The young officer only grunted before returning to his desk.

Michael took a long drink.

“I didn’t think. I just pulled my Colt. Same thing I’ve done a thousand times at home.”

The officer frowned.

“That’s the part I don’t understand. You’re a rancher, but you’re that fast?”

Michael shrugged.

“Been practicin’ since I was fifteen... maybe sixteen. My ma had an old mirror. I’d set it on a fence post and practice my draw, linin’ up the sights. Never fired. Just practiced.”

He looked down at his hands.

“I didn’t think.”

The officer continued writing while asking another question or two, but Michael barely heard him. All he could see was the money bag disappearing into the darkness.

Finally the officer leaned back.

Michael looked at him.

“What am I gonna do?”

The officer spread his hands.

“I don’t rightly know, son. If you got a look at the third fellow, we’ll put out his description. Beyond that...”

Michael lowered his eyes. There wasn’t much hope.

The officer stood.

“Sit tight. I’m gonna get Mr. Peterson’s statement.”

Michael nodded and stared at a knot in the wooden desk that looked almost like an eye, replaying the robbery for the hundredth time, trying to understand how five weeks of work had vanished in the space of a heartbeat.

Peterson was gone for the next quarter hour. Michael watched the hands slowly rotate on the clock.

The bank’s gonna close soon.

The thought landed like a stone in a pond.

Michael blinked.

No.

There was no money to deposit. His hand tightened on the desk at the remembering.

Peterson finally returned.

The officer tapped his fingers against his thighs.

“Well, son, I reckon you ought to thank your lucky stars. Or, if you’re a praying man, visit a chapel tonight. Mr. Peterson is one of the wealthiest men in Denver, and he backed your story down to the smallest detail. If you’ve got a description of the third fellow, we’ll take it. Otherwise...” He spread his hands. “You’re free to go.”

Michael blinked.

“I... didn’t get a real good look.”

He rubbed a hand across his jaw, feeling dust settle into the beard beneath his fingers.

“Young. Thin. Real thin. Might’ve been barefoot. I think he was.”

The officer nodded.

“Not much to go on.”

Michael lowered his head.

“I understand. Thanks for your time.”

As he turned to leave, the officer cleared his throat.

“Oh. Mr. Peterson’s waiting outside. Says he’d like to buy you some dinner.”

Michael fingered the brim of his hat.

“Appreciate it.”

The officer nodded. “Have a good night, Mr. Vincent.”

Michael couldn’t help but find the word ironic, considering the events that had landed him in the police station in the first place. Still, he said nothing. He simply stepped outside into the fading Denver light.

A carriage rattled over the cobblestones. Peterson’s coach waited just beyond the curb. The broad-shouldered man dressed in black opened the coach door and motioned him inside.

Michael climbed in.

Peterson leaned forward.

“Young man, I’d like to buy you some dinner. You’ve had an unpleasant evening, and a fellow shouldn’t wander Denver’s streets hungry with empty pockets.”

He folded his hands over the head of his cane.

“Besides...” He smiled pleasantly. “I believe I may have a way to help your situation.”

Michael hesitated.

What could a railroad man possibly want with me?

As if answering for him, his stomach growled.

Peterson chuckled.

“There now. Never argue with your stomach, son. Let’s get a good meal in you. Then we’ll talk.”

Michael finally nodded.

“I’d be much obliged for the dinner.”

Peterson’s smile widened. He rapped the head of his cane once against the roof of the coach, and they lurched forward.

Michael looked out the window at the new electric lights lining the streets of Denver. Fascinating things, those were. He hated that he probably looked like one of the backwoods hillbillies his father used to joke about, staring at inventions Wyoming had yet to see, and probably wouldn’t, Michael figured, for another hundred years.

The coach rolled south over cobblestones, passing rows of brownstone houses as they entered a more respectable part of town.

It finally stopped along Colfax.

Across the street stood an eating establishment called The Merchant’s Table.

Peterson stepped down behind him and grinned.

“Ah, my favorite place to eat. Come along, young man.”

He paused.

“By the way, son, what’s your name?”

Michael blinked. It suddenly occurred to him that he knew Peterson’s name, but Peterson didn’t know his.

“Michael. Michael Vincent.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Vincent.” Peterson motioned toward the door. “Now, if you’ll follow me, I believe you’ll find the steak here cooked to perfection, the coffee hot and strong. Something I imagine you didn’t have much of on the trail. And let us hope the conversation proves beneficial to us both.”

Michael followed him inside.

Electric lights hadn’t found their way into the restaurant yet. Gas sconces still lined the walls, casting a warm glow over white tablecloths and polished cutlery. The room hummed with quiet conversation and the clink of ceramic against silver.

A man behind the counter looked up and smiled.

“Mr. Peterson. Dining with us this evening? Your usual table, sir?”

Peterson nodded.

“Yes. This young man is my guest” He turned to Michael pointing to a door. “You’ll find the washroom through there if you’d like to remove some road dust.”

Michael handed the maître ‘d his hat and rubbed his hands down dusty trousers. “I believe I would.”

A Pitcher in the room held steaming water. Michael poured it into the basin and splashed it on his face. If it would have been manly Michael could have cried. It felt like heaven. He worked a wetted comb through the grime in his beard and wet hands through his hair until he looked somewhat presentable. The change in the mirror was obvious. Michael felt human again. Mostly. He refused to let his mind settle on his actions in the railyard.

He finally reemerged from the washroom, nodding at Peterson. “Thank ya.”

The older man just smiled. “Anything for a guest.”

As they crossed the dining room, Michael noticed no fewer than five men tip their heads in greeting. It didn’t seem to matter whether they wore tailored coats or trail-worn work shirts. Everyone appeared to know Peterson.

They reached a quiet table in the back corner.

Peterson handed Michael the menu.

“Order whatever you’d like, son.”

Michael read it once.

Then again.

This time he wasn’t reading the meals.

He was reading the prices.

Peterson smiled knowingly.

“Don’t concern yourself with the cost. Order what sounds good after five weeks on the trail.”

Michael’s mouth watered despite himself.

“I’ll have the ribeye. And... the baked potato.”

“The large one?” the waiter asked.

Michael hesitated.

Peterson answered for him.

“The large one.”

“And coffee,” Michael added. “Hot.”

Peterson laughed softly.

“That’s the spirit. I’ll have the same.”

The waiter nodded and disappeared toward the kitchen.

As soon as they were alone, Peterson leaned forward.

“Now then, young man. About that job.”

Michael winced.

“I promised my wife I’d be home in six weeks.”

Peterson raised an eyebrow.

“And you strike me as a man who keeps his word.”

Michael looked down.

“I try to.”

He rubbed the back of his neck.

“I’m not going to make six weeks now, but...”

His voice faded.

Peterson clicked his tongue.

“Such a shame. All that hard work.”

He waved the thought away.

“But let’s not dwell on unpleasant things. If you need to send word home, I’d be happy to arrange a telegram.”

Michael looked up.

“I don’t much like owing people.”

Peterson chuckled.

“You misunderstand me, Mr. Vincent. It wouldn’t be a favor. It would simply be an advance on work I need done.”

He folded his hands.

“Now then. Do you have transportation?”

“My mare’s boarded at the stockyards.”

“Excellent. And a place to sleep tonight?”

Michael slowly shook his head.

“I see.”

Peterson nodded thoughtfully.

“So you need a bed, food in your belly, and word sent to your wife.”

Michael nodded once.

“The work will take four weeks. You could still be home before Christmas.”

Michael frowned.

“Sadie’s alone...”

“Of course she is.”

Peterson’s voice softened.

“I admire a man who thinks of his family first.”

He paused just long enough.

“I only wonder whether she’d rather have you home immediately... or home able to keep a roof over her head.”

The waiter returned and set two steaming cups of coffee before them.

Michael wrapped both hands around the mug, letting the warmth seep into his fingers.

Because that... was the truth of it.

He didn’t want to leave Sadie, but he couldn’t afford not to. He took a long drink of coffee before setting the cup carefully back into its saucer.

“All right, Mr. Peterson.”

He met the railroad man’s eyes.

“Tell me what you need me to do.”

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Michael entered the cabin after the taxman left. Sadie looked up from the washstand she was setting up by the stove.

“You are angry.” It was not a question.

Michael released a breath through his nose.

“I have to go to Lander tomorrow.”

“Why?” She tilted her head.

He frowned. “I’ve got business.”

Sadie stared at him, and he avoided her gaze.

“What kind of business?”

“Not somethin’ to worry your pretty head over.”

Her hands found her hips. “Michael Vincent, do not patronize me.”

He pulled his hat from his head, avoiding her eyes.

“I am not being patronizin’.”

“You are.” She turned back to the washboard, setting it in the tub with more force than necessary.

He closed his eyes. He did not want to fight with her. He did not want her worrying about money.

“I have to talk to Nevels about the lumber.”

She pulled his good shirt from her basket and tossed it in.

“You owe a large sum?” Her voice was tight, but he had no idea if it was because of the debt, or his near refusal to speak of it.

“Large enough.”

Her sharp gaze found his, her hand stilling on the kettle.

“Is the land in trouble?”

He shook his head. “Land is fine. It’s the cows.”

She frowned. Then went back to her task. Steam filled the air between them as she poured the hot water in with the laundry.

“Why the cows?”

He sighed. “Because that is what Wyoming taxes, and the house, and the barn…” He hesitated. “And me now.”

Surprise filled her face. “You pay a tax upon yourself?”

He nodded. “I am over twenty-one years.”

She set the kettle back on the stove.

“So you owe for the lumber, and taxes?”

He sat in Wyatt’s rocking chair, picking at the band in his hat.

“That about sums it up.”

She came to stand in front of him.

“How much?”

“Sadie—”

“No, I am your wife. For richer or poorer. How. Much?”

He met her gaze. “Fifty-two.”

The kettle let out a low whistle, but she did not move to silence it. Her hands found her apron. Then she sat slowly on the bed across from him.

“Fifty-two?” Her face had gone pale.

“I am gonna get work.”

She nodded, as if the matter were settled. “I know you will, you’re a good man. You’re my man.”

Michael lifted his eyes to meet hers. She looked at him with such trust he swallowed.

He only hoped he could live up to the faith she had just placed in him.

~

The next morning, Nevels looked up from his ledger to acknowledge Michael standing in the doorway to the lumber mill office.

“You missed Saturday.”

Michael pulled his hat from his head. “Pa needed buryin’.”

Nevels’ head came up at that. Something flickered in his eyes and was gone. “My condolences.”

He tapped the ink pen once on the inkwell and then continued to write. “I have my own books to keep balanced. But I can give ya thirty days to start on the interest.”

Michael felt something loosen behind his ribs. “I am obliged. Would ya have any other work maybe?”

Nevels looked up sharply again, studied Michael’s face, and then returned to his ledger. “Would that I did. Work is a hard thing to come by in these parts.”

Michael nodded and put his hat back on his head.

“If I have any openings, I’ll be sure to let you know.” The lumberman spoke before dismissing him.

Michael left the office and made his way down the street to the Lander Saloon. He refused to drink, but if he was going to find work, it would be here.

He entered the establishment and the bartender gave him a nod. The place was dim in the daylight. Only a few tables in use. Smoke rose in columns from the rolled cigarettes of three cowboys. The oldest nodded at Michael. Lester Rockwell.

“Vincent, how’s yer place gettin’ on these days?”

Michael pulled up a chair and waved the offered bottle of whiskey away. “Pa’s dead.”

The bottle stopped mid-pour, Rockwell’s jaw tightened. “I see.”

Michael sighed. “Got the tax papers.”

The cowboy on the right, Rockwell’s son, Ethan, snorted. “You and everyone else.”

Michael clasped his hands. “Pa was behind.”

“Everyone is behind. These last years have been hard on all of us.”

The words were spoken as fact, no pity needed. Deeper in the saloon a woman laughed.

Rockwell shifted. “Thinking about drivin’ a herd to Denver.”

Michael’s head came up. “In the autumn?”

Rockwell shrugged. “Eighteen a head for steers, twenty-three for good grass-fed beef.”

Michael considered the numbers. “I got six yearling steers I could drive.”

Rockwell nodded. “I got seventeen. Rupert has eleven. We go all in together. We got a higher chance of makin’ Denver.”

Michael rubbed a hand over his jaw. “We got to cross the Red Desert. Not much out there, not much out there at all.”

Rockwell nodded. “We’ll have to carry firewood.”

“Weather killed Pa.” Michael said.

That sobered the men at the table.

“It was a freak storm. God rest his soul.” Rockwell let the words settle.

Michael shrugged. “Sure, but this is Wyoming in October.”

Rockwell studied him. “And taxes are still due in January.”

The woman laughed again, as if mocking the reality gripping every man there.

After a moment of consideration, Michael set his hat on the table. “All right, I’m in.”

~

Sadie was quiet at supper, filling his plate and waiting. He took a bite of her stew, letting the flavors of onion, potato, and salted beef swirl over his tongue.

He sat back watching her face.

“I couldn’t find work in Lander.”

Her eyes met his and she lowered her spoon.

“What does that mean for us?”

Michael hunched his shoulders and stared hard at his stew.

“Some of the neighbors are planning a drive to Denver.”

She was quiet. “I don’t know what that means.”

“It means I’ll be takin’ six head from the herd to Colorado.”

She went still. “Alone?”

He shook his head. “The other ranchers will go too.”

“Can I go?”

He sat back. “Sadie, a cattle drive is no place for a woman. Much less one with winter comin’ on.”

Her face flushed. “You’re leaving me.” Her voice was cold.

He set his spoon down with a clunk.

“Don’t be like that.”

Her shoulders began to creep up. “I am not being like anything.”

He took a deep breath. Counting before answering. “I don’t want to fight you.”

“I don’t want to be left behind.”

“I am not leavin’ you behind.”

“Aren’t you?”

He placed his hands flat on the table, the pain from a splinter serving to keep him focused.

“If I don’t do this, we will lose the herd.”

“Then let me help.”

His voice had dropped. “I need ya here, Sadie. I need someone keeping the other livestock fed and the hearth burnin’ while I am away. That’s how ya help.”

She pursed her lips.

“How long?”

“Six weeks at most.”

“What if I need help while you’re gone?”

It was a fair question. Michael considered. “Yeagers are the closest. I’ll stop by tomorrow, make sure they know I’ll be off the ranch. Colby is a good man. I’ll leave Bliss so you can ride if you need.”

She studied her hands. “I don’t know if I can saddle her.”

Michael had not thought of that.

“I’ll make sure Colby can check every few days.” The answer was hollow.

She tapped one finger on the table.

“Six weeks,” she said.

“Six weeks.”

She closed her eyes. “I’ll manage,” she whispered.

And Michael hated that she would, and that she had to.

~

Three days later the sky dawned clear with a mild breeze from the south.

Michael finished cinching the buckle on the saddle bags. Sadie brought out his bedroll.

The sky was beginning to pink, and the light caught the red in her hair.

He took it from her and tied the bedroll. The steers he had separated from the herd lowed in the pen.

He reached for the reins and she snagged his sleeve.

“Come home.”

He turned to her, removed his glove and cupped her cheek.

“Six weeks.”

Tears gathered in her eyes, but she didn’t cry. She just leaned in for a kiss.

“Six weeks,” she whispered against his lips.

He pulled her in tight for a heartbeat, before forcing himself to drop his arms and let go.

She stepped back, and he mounted the bay. He leaned down and lowered the latch on the gate. The steers rumbled out as he whistled to the herd dog, Tick. Sadie walked to the porch and lifted her hand.

At the ridge, Michael turned once in the saddle. She was still there on the porch. He raised his arm. She waved. As the sun burst free from the horizon, Michael turned in the saddle and rode away.

~

The first three days of the drive were smooth enough that Michael let himself breathe. Frost glittered the ground as the sun came up.

The men would pull themselves from bedrolls. Drink leftover coffee over the fire. Thawing bones leached of warmth in the night, and chew hardtack as they mounted up.

By midday the warmth of the sun bore down to make dust curl from the trail. It collected in folds of skin, clothes, and behind their teeth.

None of them wanted to push the cattle more than ten miles a day. Any more and the precious fat the animals had accumulated would start to come off.

Grazing was harder to come by this time of year, which forced them to stop well before the sun went down in the evenings. A cold wind caught them more than once off the Medicine Bow range, as they continued to push south and east.

Not one man was under the illusion that time was on their side.

The fourth night Michael drew second watch, his repeater across his knees.

The other men had long since bedded down, but the cattle were restless. Tick raised his head. A low growl and then a bark sounded in the animal’s throat. Michael’s bay nickered softly under him.

“Easy,” he whispered, patting her neck.

Over the wind Michael heard the unmistakable sound of a howl in the desert. Wolves had caught the scent of the herd.

Rockwell sat straight up from his bedroll.

“Wolves,” he called.

Michael lifted his rifle, urging his mare forward with his knees. The other men around the fire were already reaching for their own weapons.

Tick shot to his feet, barking once, and ran straight into the dark.

Cows bellowed as they were suddenly charged by a grey shadow from the night.

Michael urged his horse into a gallop as the wolf cut a yearling steer from the herd.

He raised the rifle and took a shot, whistling for Tick. A blur in his motion, the hound circled, nipping at the kicking heels of the frightened steer. The wolf, frightened by the noise of Michael’s rifle, ran back into the dark.

Michael whistled again over the cacophony of wolves and gunfire from the men at the fire. He rode the bay along the flank of the herd, signaling Tick.

The dog turned and with a burst of speed flew past another lunging wolf three times his size to ward another calf off from leaving the circle.

Rockwell took the shot and the predator retreated.

Michael kept the bay between the dark side of the herd and the circling pack. Tick yelped once, then reappeared in the glow of the fire. The pack had not found easy prey and now slunk back into the shadows, howling their displeasure.

Michael whistled to Tick, who gathered the bawling cattle into a tighter group. He pulled the mare to a halt. Rockwell nodded to him from by the fire.

“You did well, Vincent.”

Michael took a deep breath and held it to calm the drumming of his heart against his ribs. He nodded toward the older man.

The cowboys worked to resettle the cattle, and Michael crawled onto his bedroll, snapping his fingers at Tick. The cattle dog lolled his tongue and lay down beside his master. Michael ran a hand down his coat, checking for bites.

“Yer a good boy, Tick. A real good boy.”

The dog whined once and settled his head on his paws, and Michael finally fell into a well-earned sleep, with his hand on Tick’s head and Sadie in his mind.

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Chapter 5 Death & Taxes

The ceremony concluded, Michael drove his father and Sadie home from Lander in the buckboard. The sun was setting beyond the Tetons, and a chill breeze brushed at the tendrils of loose hair falling from Sadie’s low bun. She pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders and Michael glanced over at her.

“Almost home.” He flicked the reins in his hands.

She blushed and stared down at her shoes. “I’ll fix some supper.”

“Supper sounds fine.” Michael smiled gently at her.

Wyatt remained blessedly quiet in the back.

“We don’t have to do anythin’ you aren’t ready for,” Michael ventured, keeping his voice low.

Sadie’s eyes flew open and her cheeks flamed, even in the gathering dusk.

“It isn’t that I cannot—” She broke off, then glanced at his father.

Michael’s grip tightened, and the mares slowed with the tension. He forced himself to relax.

He stared hard at the tracks in the grass ahead.

“I understand,” he answered. “As I said, I don’t expect you to do anythin’.”

She traced the scarred tissue of her right hand with the equally scarred pointer finger on her left. She nodded stiffly and said nothing more.

They pulled into the yard as the last of the sun’s rays faded. Wyatt lumbered out, as Michael stepped to the ground and rounded the wagon to lift his bride down.

For a moment their faces were mere inches apart. Michael’s hands twitched on her waist. He slowly lowered his head.

Wyatt cleared his throat, suddenly breaking the stillness. “I’ll be in the barn,” he grunted.

Sadie’s lips twitched, and Michael sighed like a deeply put-upon man. She could no longer hold the giggle and it escaped her throat.

“I am sorry,” she said.

He lowered his forehead to hers. “I suppose we’ll just have to figure out somethin’ else.”

She smiled, then stepped back. “I’ll get supper.”

Michael watched her disappear into the house and grabbed the harness to unhitch the horses.

“Welcome to matrimony indeed,” he grumbled to himself.

~

Michael led the horses into their stalls just as an icy wind gusted through the barn door. Wyatt was spreading fresh hay in an empty stall, and Michael frowned.

“Pa, what do you think yer doin’?”

Wyatt glanced over his shoulder and shrugged.

“I won’t be the old man in yer way.”

Another gust rattled the loose boards overhead. Michael tied off the bay’s lead rope before turning back to his father.

“You can’t sleep out here. The weather’s turnin’. Not with yer cough.”

Wyatt straightened and fixed him with a look.

“It’s yer weddin’ night.”

“I am aware, but that’s mine and Sadie’s concern, not yers.”

Wyatt opened his mouth to argue, but the words turned into a fit of coughing that bent him nearly double. When it finally passed, he drew a slow breath and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I don’t wanna burden yer woman.”

Michael hung the last of the tack on its peg before answering.

“She ain’t said one word about it.”

Wyatt looked away.

“She shouldn’t have to.”

Michael studied the old man for a long moment. His father rubbed at his knees again, then shifted his weight as though every joint pained him.

“You ain’t sleepin’ in the barn.”

Wyatt sighed.

Michael looked toward the narrow strip of ground beside the cabin.

“I’ll build you a lean-to before the real cold gets here.”

Wyatt snorted.

“Lumber costs.”

Michael flexed his fingers once.

“Everythin’ costs.”

Silence settled between them while the wind whistled through the cracks in the siding.

Finally Wyatt nodded.

“Fine. I’ll come inside and stay outta yer way.”

~

Both men entered the cabin, and Sadie glanced back and forth between them. The scent of rabbit stew she had simmered all day filled the air, mingling with the smell of fresh bread she had baked that morning.

She had set the table with care. Michael’s mother’s good china rested at each place. White plates painted with delicate blue roses sat beside real silver that gleamed in the lantern light.

“Where did you find that?” His voice came out rough.

She frowned at the tone. “It was in the chest under the bed. I found it while cleaning one day and decided we would use it for a special occasion. Tonight counts.”

The two men looked at each other. Neither had ever told her the truth about Michael’s mother. Some subjects were just too painful to touch.

Wyatt broke the silence.

“’Bout time it got put to good use.”

Michael raised an eyebrow but said nothing more to his father. Instead he turned to his wife.

“Smells good enough to eat.”

She smiled brightly. He hated that her smile relieved him so much.

The silver clinked against the porcelain. The meal was excellent, better than Michael or Wyatt had ever managed when it had just been the two of them.

His father thanked Sadie and bid them both good night when the meal was over.

Michael banked the fire, and she disappeared behind the curtain he had hung for her weeks before. At first he was tempted to sit and read, not because he was anxious, but because he did not want her to be. At least that was what he told himself.

She poked her head around the curtain, her shawl wrapped around a white nightgown.

“Are you coming to bed?”

He looked at her. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders in thick brown waves.

He swallowed twice.

“Yeah,” he managed. “Yeah, I’ll be there in a minute.”

He checked the bar on the door, the rifle above the mantel, and the fire one last time. Finally, finding no more chores to occupy his hands, he wiped them on his trousers and stepped behind the curtain.

She was already beneath the quilt, and her eyes sparkled when she saw him.

He blew out the lantern, undressed in the dark, and slid beneath the covers.

She rolled toward him, and for a long moment they simply lay there.

He reached over and took her hand.

Her breath caught once.

“You all right?” he asked.

“More than all right,” her voice came softly beside him.

He rolled onto his side, trying to make out her face in the darkness. Starlight spilling through the window gave him just enough light to see her eyes.

“Yer sure?” he asked again.

“I am.”

He cupped her face gently and shifted closer.

From across the cabin came a low rumble.

SNNNNNORK.

Michael froze.

Sadie startled.

Then her shoulders began to shake. She clapped both hands over her mouth in a desperate attempt to stay quiet, but a snort escaped through her nose.

That did it, and Michael lost all composure. His forehead came to rest against hers.

He closed his eyes.

“We’re not gettin’ any sleep tonight.”

Which only sent her into another fit of laughter.

“Not for the reasons one might imagine,” she whispered, laughing hard enough that tears began to gather in her eyes.

Michael sighed and rolled onto his back.

“I can’t get that lean-to built quick enough.”

Sadie rested her head against his shoulder and laughed a little longer.

~

Michael hitched the horses again the next morning. He offered Sadie a chaste kiss.

“I’ll be home by supper.”

She nodded, squeezing his hand before staying on the porch to wave as he crested the hill.

Jeffrey Nevels raised an eyebrow when Michael pulled up in front of the mill.

“Figured you’d be honeymoonin’.”

Michael snorted.

“None of yer business.”

The lanky man shrugged.

“Then what can I do fer ya?”

Michael handed over his list.

“Need lumber. Nails. Hinges.”

Nevels looked it over and let out a low whistle.

“That’s a fair pile.”

“I know.”

“You got the cash?”

Michael was quiet long enough to answer the question.

“No.”

Nevels motioned him into the office.

“Come on then.”

He settled behind his desk, pulled the ledger toward himself, and dipped his pen into the inkwell.

“Seventeen dollars and forty-three cents.”

Michael stared a beat at the figure.

“I could mill it myself for nothin’.”

Nevels raised an eyebrow.

“Then why don’t ya?”

Michael rested both hands on the brim of his hat.

“Because my pa’s cough is gettin’ worse, winter’s comin’, and I ain’t got that kind of time.”

Nevels nodded once.

“Fair enough.”

Michael drew a slow breath.

“I’ll have to put it on account.”

Nevels frowned.

“That’s more’n I usually carry.”

“I’ll work it off.”

“How?”

“Half a day every Saturday till it’s paid.”

Nevels leaned back in his chair.

“Yer newlywed. That how ya wanna spend yer Saturdays?”

Michael met his eyes.

“That’s my business.”

The shouts of the mill workers came from outside the window.

Finally Nevels nodded.

“All right. But if you quit on me, the interest starts.”

Michael took the pen. For a moment he looked at the blank line waiting for his name.

Then he signed it.

“Much obliged.”

Nevels tore the page from his order book and stood.

“I’ll have the boys load yer wagon.”

Half an hour later Michael rattled out of Lander with a wagon full of lumber and a debt he already intended to erase.

~

Michael rose before the sun. The sound of digging, sawing, and hammering filled the yard. Wyatt helped as he could, but the chill air set him to coughing so often that Sadie would come out of the cabin.

She gently took his arm. “Come on, Mr. Vincent. Sit inside for a spell and keep me company.”

“Stop babyin’ me,” he grumbled.

“I am not. I want to hear more about Texas,” Sadie said.

Michael would nod at her and silent understanding would pass between husband and wife.

She brought Michael’s supper at dusk, her shawl wrapped around her shoulders.

“He’s sleeping,” she said.

Michael nodded, and hung the lantern, eating standing up.

“Go inside, Sadie. It’s gettin’ too cold fer you to stand out here.”

She looked around the frame. “I could—” she cut herself off. Because her hands no longer had the strength to hold a hammer, much less swing one.

Michael swallowed the bite of pork he had just taken. He reached a hand toward her. His mouth tilted into a grin.

“You ever drive a nail before?”

She stared at him, then blinked. “No.”

He huffed. “Then maybe we leave the building up to me.”

That at least made her smile.

When he finally came to bed the hour was late. Sadie was asleep on her side, and he dropped down next to her, exhausted.

Five days later the lean-to stood against the cabin, weathertight.

Sadie and Michael helped Wyatt move his things to the room. Michael dumped a load of firewood next to the small potbellied stove he had scavenged from an abandoned homestead.

“Wind is from the north, we may get snow. You keep that door barred, and the fire fed, Pa.”

Wyatt grunted, placing his bottle of whiskey on the shelf.

“Sight better than the barn, that’s what matters.”

Michael shrugged. “Sadie’ll have supper.”

Wyatt nodded.

They all retired early. The wind coming down from the north was curling icy fingers around the boards and planks.

Michael kissed his wife goodnight.

“I’ve got to be at Nevels’ early.”

He fell asleep nearly as soon as his head hit the pillow.

Something woke him from a dead sleep. He sat up listening, and that was when he heard the banging.

“What—?”

He reached for the lantern, turning it up. The banging sounded again.

The lean-to door.

Michael scrambled for his trousers, not bothering to tie them.

Sadie stirred next to him. “Stay here!” His tone brooked no argument.

He rushed out the door of the cabin and into a world of white. He could barely see around the corner.

The wind held the lean-to door in its grip, swinging it back and forth. It banged on the frame as Michael approached. He threw an arm up to protect against the stinging ice.

“Pa!” Michael called, his voice desperate.

Michael followed the outside wall with his hand lest he become lost in the blizzard.

He pushed inside the room. The lantern showed snow already drifted into the corners. The stove was out. The gleam of glass caught his eye. An empty bottle of whiskey lay on its side on the floor.

Against his instinct Michael lifted the lantern higher. Wyatt lay under a thin blanket of snow on his bed. Had it not been for the unnatural gray hue of his face, Michael would have thought his father asleep.

“Pa.” The word came out strangled.

Michael reached for his father.

Cold.

He sank to his knees. His eyes moving to the stove. The fire had gone out hours ago.

I should’ve checked.

“Michael.” The distant frantic sound of Sadie’s voice came over the wind.

There was nothing to be done for Wyatt now. But Michael was loath to leave the old man.

The idea of Sadie venturing into the storm to find him pulled him to his feet.

He wiped his nose on his sleeve and realized his face was wet.

He stepped to the door. “STAY INSIDE!” he called over the howl of the blizzard. He repeated it just in case. Then turned once more to his Pa.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

The body gave no answer. As Michael shut the door behind him, he had never felt so alone.

~

The ground was stubborn. Michael found himself strangely grateful for it. Despite the mid-autumn chill, sweat ran down his neck and forearms.

The blizzard had passed, the grief had not. Michael swung the pickaxe until his hands were raw. The hole was just deep enough to keep wolves from digging up the rough pine box he had built.

Sadie had painstakingly torn strips of linen into a shroud. “Let me help. He was kind to me in his last days.”

Michael had turned before she could see what her words had done to him.

Now the wind blew down from the Tetons, stirring the fringe on Sadie’s shawl and catching her skirt.

Michael held the family Bible at the head of the grave.

“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Blessed be the name of the Lord,” he read.

Sadie scooped dirt with the side of her hand. It thunked onto the top of the pine box.

“Amen,” she whispered, not trying to hide her tears.

It was dusk when Michael entered the warmth of the cabin. Sadie looked up from the stove, her eyes red and blotchy.

He hung his hat and the two ate in silence. The scrape of pewter, the crackle in the stove and Wyatt’s coonhound whining in the empty lean-to were the only sounds in the cabin.

After dinner, Michael helped Sadie dry the dishes she washed. He lowered himself into Wyatt’s old rocking chair, staring into the open stove.

Sadie moved to his side, laying her hand on his shoulder. He reached for it and pulled her into his lap. He did not cry, just took one shuddering breath, with his face buried in her hair.

As the fire burned down into embers they slipped behind the curtain, seeking in one another comfort words could not give.

~

The Sabbath passed quietly, and Monday dawned overcast and cold. Michael was mucking stalls when Wyatt’s dog bayed in the yard.

He leaned the rake against the stall and stepped out, wiping his hands on a rag. A man rode down the ridge on a black horse. Sadie stepped out onto the porch, and he waved her back inside.

He stood in the yard against the rail, letting the man come to him. When the visitor rode into the yard, Michael felt his stomach tighten. Frederick Lloyd, the county taxman, dismounted from his gelding. His lips parted in a tight smile.

“Morning, Michael. Wyatt around?”

Michael’s grip tightened on the rail before he let go.

“Pa’s dead,” he said flatly.

Lloyd paused only a moment.

“I see.” He lifted the valise from his saddlebags. “Could we step inside to discuss the matter?”

Michael glanced toward the cabin.

“My missus is inside. Is this gonna worry her?”

Lloyd considered the question.

“Yes.”

Michael nodded once.

“Then we’re stayin’ right here.”

Lloyd made no objection. He opened the valise and withdrew a small stack of papers.

“Your father’s death transfers ownership of the property to you. With that transfer comes the outstanding property tax obligation.”

Michael frowned.

“How much?”

Lloyd tapped the papers.

“It’s all here. Legal and certified.”

Michael’s eyes narrowed.

“Didn’t say it wasn’t. Legal don’t always make somethin’ right.”

Lloyd neither agreed nor disagreed. He simply handed him the papers.

Michael refused to look at them.

“That yer only business?”

Lloyd shifted his weight.

“If the taxes are not paid in full by January first, the State of Wyoming will be forced to confiscate and auction off your herd.”

“Forced?”

The taxman folded his hands behind his back.

“I do not write the law, Mr. Vincent.”

“No, I suppose ya don’t.”

“Payment may be made at my office.”

Lloyd stepped back to his horse.

Michael finally looked down at the papers. The figures blurred for just a moment as his fingers unconsciously wrinkled the page.

Thirty-six dollars.

He looked back up.

“I ain’t got thirty-six dollars.”

Lloyd mounted without answering. He settled his hat, turned his horse toward the road, and rode out of the yard.

Michael stood where he was, the tax notice crumpling slowly in his hand.

This article is part of a paired editorial. For a complementary perspective, I encourage you to read T.H. Meyer’s article Mythbusting “Clean” Fiction: No, It’s Not All Butterflies and Hallmark

Clean fiction vs. Sanitized

In the publishing world today there is a term that describes a book free of explicit sex, gratuitous violence, and profane language. This is the term of “clean fiction.” Often though that term can tend to be misunderstood as boring, white-washed, or sanitized. Clean and sanitized are not the same. A kitchen counter may be clean of clutter, this does not mean it has been sanitized of bacteria unseen.

I often describe my books as clean, because this is the most readily available term in the publishing industry. But a recent article by Phillip Snyder over at The Living Room Disciple has inspired a hunt for the virtues portrayed in Philippians 4:8 in my own fictional art.

Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Perhaps pure is the more precise word than clean. Because purity is what should lie at the heart of the motive for our art.

If there be any virtue and if there be any praise.

Art should inspire the virtues of Philippians 4:8. One of which is truth, the reliability of the story portrayed. Another is honest or honorable, depending on translation. The Greek word semnos, means having weight or gravity. It is the idea of something serious and credible. The verse holds a distinction between honest and true.

One cannot sanitize the darkness of our sin-sick world and be honest. An honest assessment of sin requires the truth be told about it. The loveliness of the good report of the gospel is the point that redemption makes what is broken whole. If the wound is diminished, so too is the wonder of the cure.

God Is Not Afraid of the Dark

What an odd statement. Of course God is not afraid of the dark, God is not afraid of anything. So let me ask you dear reader, why should we be?

The Bible does not sanitize sin. From Genesis, to Judges to the Prophets, various methods of detailed accounting of wickedness is given. Not to glorify the evil, rather it is always to drag it into the light and call it what it is. To point to the need for the glorious gospel of Christ.

God is not afraid of the dark. Jesus is the light of the World. He told his disciples He came to seek and save that which was lost. The whole point of His life here on earth was to suffer the darkness of cruel death to pay for our crimes against Him.

This is not to say that all art must carry darkness, it’s rather to point out the fact that art which does portray darkness, should do so with the purpose or the light of redemption shining that much brighter in it.

God never exposes darkness simply to expose darkness, it is there to show that His redemption is greater than the darkness. Every account of human depravity in Scripture serves a greater purpose. It reveals our need for a Redeemer. If our stories tell the truth about sin, they must also tell the truth about the One who came to conquer it. Darkness is not the destination. Redemption is.

Purity of the scene

So what makes a scene pure?

Purity is not the absence of darkness. It is the refusal to make peace with it. It is the ability to abhor that which is evil and cleave to that which is good.

A pure scene does not need to cut the darkness or trauma. If an author writes it, however, it must be honest. It must treat the brokenness and pain of the character with moral weight. The reader should not experience euphoria at sin depicted in a scene. Sin depicted truthfully should cause sorrow, reflection, and gratitude that God loves us where we are, but too much to leave us there.

That is the purpose of the virtues listed. Sin is not lovely, but redemption and hope are.

The hardest scenes to write.

There are many hard scenes in Bethan’s Identity. There are three that stand out as being the most difficult to get right.

The first was Bethan’s choice to sell her body for food, so she and her brother could eat. I did not write the act, I wrote the negotiation. It was harder, because this scene required restraint in the dialogue. It was pure because the choice itself was nauseating. The reader is left with dread and a feeling of near despair.

The second scene was the assault. This scene stayed in Bethan’s head, she disassociates from her body. I can hear the pearl clutching crowd now. Gasp, how dare you write such a thing and call it Christian fiction.

Because in my own experience, a victim often asks God where were you. So I write the scene to show witness. Because God was there the whole time. Broken hearted, grieving at the sin, with the ability to redeem it.

The third scene was the street preacher who looks at Bethan with kind eyes. Crying out, that Yah-Roi sees, and calls the sinners home. Bethan prays for the first time in years. Interceding for the only person she still loves, and then she whispers. “See him, but do not bother with me.”

That scene was harder than the other two, because it showed how far Bethan had fallen. That too was written from lived experience.

Sin and trauma are not lovely, so why write it at all?

Some authors are gifted at writing stories where hope is quiet, gentle, and comforting. Those stories have ministered to countless readers, and the Church needs them. My stories tend to begin farther down in the valley. They linger longer in the darkness because that’s where I first learned what redemption meant.

Some authors excel at showing the beauty of walking with Christ. My stories more often begin with the question of whether Christ is still there when everything has fallen apart.

When I first started writing Songs of Redemption, fourteen years ago. I knew the direction the story needed to take from the beginning. However I was afraid. Of criticism, of being accused of being unchristian, for the story that was fighting to come out.

So I sanded it down, gave my heroine a noble escape, a thrilling backstory, and strong character virtues. The result was safe. It was pleasant. It was also hollow. A story about redemption had become a story that no longer needed redeeming.

I shelved the story, got married, had children, earned a degree in trauma counseling, and then the Lord walked me through grief I never expected. Miscarriages. Unemployment. A traumatic brain injury. The resurfacing of childhood trauma. Life stripped away the tidy version of suffering I had tried to write.

That is my story, it is neither sanitary nor cozy.

When I started the rewrite of Bethan’s Identity, the story of the escaped girl no longer fit the reality of my experience, or the experiences of many people whom I have counseled over the years. Real life is often deeply raw, painful and dark. To tell the story of a persecuted girl who becomes a refugee in her own country, who betrays God just so she can eat, and finds herself sold into slavery as a result. I had to be honest. And a miraculous deliverance from all of that, so my heroine could succeed, I felt would be a slap to those like me who never got rescued.

There is a difference. Rescue removes us from suffering. Redemption give the suffering purpose. That realization has changed my faith and the way I tell stories. Bethan does not get rescued. She gets redeemed. Because that is what the gospel is for.

The whole point of the Gospel

Redemption is the theme of the cross. The sacrifice required to buy us back. Free to all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

Our writing is an extension of our worship to the God who saved us. We write the truth of the darkness, to shine the light of the hope we have in Jesus more brightly.

Our fiction is not for everyone, but it is for the weary, for the captive souls troubled in sin, for the reader who needs hope that their darkness is not the end. We write to proclaim liberty to the prisoner and to set the captive free.

Art should inspire virtue, not pacifism.

We do not leave our reader in the darkness, or happy with the sin portrayed. The whole purpose of our writing is to show the moral gravity of sin.

You cannot be honest about sin by pretending it isn’t that bad. An honest assessment demands us to give it the same moral weight that God does. And when we do that, we inspire others to call sin what it is.

Evil.

And refuse to participate in it.

This art is not Hallmark, where hardship is overcome by romance. It is not cozy. Redemption costs something on the page because redemption has a price. The word means to buy back. It implies that something was owned, lost, and returned only after sacrifice.

T.H. Meyer's Article Here.

Dear readers,

Due to the realities of being a one-person publishing house, I owe you an apology.

White Harvest Media is in the final formatting push for Jessica Hopson’s upcoming novel, Tristan’s Reckoning. To ensure both projects receive the attention they deserve, the fourth installment of NONE will be released on July 3, 2026, rather than today.

I apologize for the delay and appreciate your patience as I work to maintain the quality you expect from White Harvest Media.

Thank you for your understanding,

Jessica Hopson

P.S. If you’re looking for something to read in the meantime, enjoy these arc- connected, deleted scenes from Tristan’s Reckoning.

Tristan was determined to treat the journey to Doreth like an adventure. His father’s elite band of Kingdom Guard traveled with him to the High Keep.

The first night they camped under the stars, field tents and game from the woods. Tristan sat by the fire and listened to the men banter. The embers turned orange. The shadows grew. The talk became story.

“The battle at S’lmancha,” Dolfo said, slapping Toval on the back. “Now that was fight, Se?”

Tristan leaned forward as Toval raised his drinking tin. “Se, though as I recall, you hid under a rock while I took out that lead archer with my own bow.”

The prince blinked, watching Dolfo’s face closely, waiting for the bigger man to react.

The circle around him however burst into laughter, and the captain of his father’s guard, Fernan raised his own tin. “Next you’ll be telling how you took out an entire mounted archery unit with that bow of yours.”

Toval’s eyes twinkled. “Se, the story gets better when I tell it.”

Dolfo huffed, but his lips twisted into a wry grin.

The boy sat back, watching the ease and camaraderie.

They are like brothers. He thought. I want that.

He was startled by the idea. He was a prince, not a warrior, but still, something in the easy way these men carried themselves, despite their capacity for violence, called to something in the boy.

Father is a warrior, but not like this. Tristan thought of the kings in Yah-Roi’s Book. They had been warriors too.

I will be a warrior, and I will be a king. And I will be good at both. He decided.

~

Morning sunlight danced across the harbor as Tristan stepped onto the deck of the Serona. The ship hummed with activity. Lines were coiled. Decks scrubbed. Supplies inventoried.

The familiar rhythm settled easily around him. Five years of war had transformed the Serona. Not merely the timber and rigging.

The men. The crew moved with practiced confidence. Orders required fewer repetitions. Corrections came before mistakes grew costly. The ship functioned as though each man understood his place within something larger than himself.

Kolon hurried past carrying an armful of reports.

“Captain.”

He nearly collided with a sailor.

“Watch yourself,” the sailor barked.

“Se.”

Kolon adjusted the papers.

“Sorry.”

“You’ve been apologizing for five years ensign,” Olan observed from nearby.

Kolon scowled.

“You’ve been grumbling for at least twice that..”

“I’ve earned it.”

The young man opened his mouth. Then thought better of it.

Tristan hid a smile.

“You’ll hurt his feelings,” he said.

Olan glanced toward him.

“I have feelings?”

“No.”

“Good.”

The older sailor returned to inspecting the morning reports. The exchange drew quiet laughter from several nearby crewmen.

The Serona ran smoothly. Not perfectly. No ship ever did. But smoothly enough that Tristan found himself enjoying the inspection rather than enduring it.

“You look entirely too pleased with yourself.”

Pater’s voice carried easily across the deck.

Tristan turned.

“Good morning to you as well.”

Pater folded his arms.

“I’ve decided.”

“Dangerous.”

“We haven’t crossed swords in months.”

Several sailors immediately slowed their work. The wiser among them drifted closer.

“I have responsibilities,” Tristan replied.

“You inspect ropes.”

“I command a flotilla.”

“You inspect ropes importantly.”

Laughter spread through the deck.

Tristan sighed.

“You realize you’re insufferable.”

“You’ve said that since you were thirteen.”

“You’ve earned it.”

Pater grinned.

“I challenge you.”

The crew responded immediately. Coins exchanged hands. Someone began taking wagers.

Olan glanced up from his reports.

“Five silver on Pater.”

Tristan looked offended.

“You’ve served under me for years.”

“I know exactly what I’m doing.”

Pater barked a laugh.

The sailors cleared a space on the dock. Wooden practice swords appeared from somewhere.

Tristan narrowed his eyes.

“You prepared for this.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“You brought practice weapons.”

Pater shrugged.

“Coincidence.”

Tristan accepted the offered sword.

“You cheat.”

“You say that every time.”

They circled. Neither rushed. Years of familiarity settled naturally into movement.

Tristan knew Pater favored his left. Pater knew Tristan over-committed when frustrated.

The first exchange ended in a crack of wood. The second nearly caught Tristan’s shoulder. He pivoted away, but Pater anticipated it. Their swords met again. And again.

Neither man struck to maim, but no opening went unmarked. A slash that would have taken Tristan’s knee became a brutal strike against his thigh. He answered with the flat of his blade across Pater’s wrist, hard enough to numb the fingers. Pater hissed and tightened his grip.

They knew each other too well for mercy. Mercy in the yard became death on the field.

Pater drove forward. Tristan gave ground, turned the next blow aside, and came in low. Pater pressed forward. Tristan yielded ground.

Someone shouted encouragement. Kolon lifted the new cabin boy onto a barrel for a better view. Olan accepted another handful of coins.

Traitor.

The realization came with surprising force. Tristan was happy. Not triumphant. Not celebrated. Simply happy. The smell of salt. The laughter of sailors. The familiar weight of a practice sword. Pater’s grin. War had taken much. It had not taken this.

Pater feinted high. Tristan reacted. Too late. The soldier swept his legs cleanly from beneath him. Tristan landed hard in the dirt.

The dock erupted. Laughter rolled across the harbor.

Pater extended a hand downward.

“You’ve grown soft among books.”

Tristan accepted the offered hand.

“You cheat.”

Pater hauled him upright.

“You say that every time.”

The sailors cheered. Olan collected his winnings with irritating satisfaction. And standing upon the dock beside the men he loved most, Tristan discovered that even after war, Yah still gave ordinary mercies to those willing to receive them.

____________________________________________________________________________

Thanks again for reading.

Tristan’s story will be available to the public on June 30, 2026.

Pre-Order Here

The music swells in the large auditorium with the stained glass windows.

Ho, my comrades,

see the signal waving in the sky.

Reinforcements now appearing,

victory is nigh.

Hold the fort,

for I am coming,

Jesus signals still.

My daddy picks up his Bible and waves it.

Wave the answer back to heaven

By thy grace we will.

The hymn concludes, and the congregation sits, but I stare at my daddy. The smile he gets on his face when we sing that song. The fervor with which he sings it, I am mesmerized.

So I ask him after church.

“Daddy, why do you like that song so much?”

He turns to me with a smile, and a twinkle in his eyes. “I like it because it is a faithful man’s song.”

Someday, I will understand the theme of that song. My daddy was right.

The Radio Preacher

This is my Great-Grandfather Harold Burkholder. Originally of Plainville, Kansas, he met and married my great-grandmother, Irma, in the 1920s. After they moved from Kansas to Colorado, during the days of the Dust Bowl, my great-grandparents joined Tabernacle Baptist Church in Denver. It was under the ministry of Harvey Springer that Harold surrendered to preach for Jesus.

God had to break him first, and that is a story for another day, but it was God who did the rebuilding too. He started the Colfax Baptist Church, which later became Westland Baptist Church in Denver.

The father of eight boys and three girls, one of whom was my grandmother, the man fondly referred to as grandpa-great by my generation, adored his family. He loved Jesus most of all. When he preached, he preached Jesus. When he spoke with strangers, or family he spoke of the gospel. A fire for seeing souls saved burned in his heart. A man with a prophetic gift, he was often described as being before his time.

In 1959, having been given a clean bill of health that week, he was dressing for bed one night. The account is that he froze, looked up at the ceiling and gasped with wonder and awe. “Oh Irma—,” before he collapsed from a massive heart attack. I believe my great-grandfather saw Jesus just before he died that night.

I did not know him personally. I was not born for another thirty years, but his impact and legacy still press on me today. He was faithful. He pursued the salvation of his children with tenacity. He discipled them to love Jesus, and that same heritage was passed down generation to generation to me.

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The Farm Boy

My Grampy, Howard Musgrave, was born in Kiowa, Colorado, on a working dairy farm during the Great Depression. The third brother in a family of seven boys and one girl, he was shy to the point of phobia, he preferred to hide in the barn when company came rather than be forced to speak to strangers. Yet the first time he met my grandmother at nine, he was determined she would be his wife.

He did indeed succeed in his quest and in October of 1955, he wed Naomi Burkholder in a ceremony performed by Harold. He was a truck driver in the family business for years, and like my great-grandfather, God had to get his attention too, before he surrendered to preach. He told God no again and again, relating to Moses, when he told God, “I am a man of slow speech.”

The idea of public speaking terrified him. But after several close calls in his truck, my grandfather said, “Whatever you want, Lord, I will go where you want me to go, and be what you want me to be.”

God called them to Chile to be missionaries in 1968, where they began to learn the Spanish language. They left the country in the lead-up to the civil unrest under President Allende’s administration, and returned to the United States for a short time.

It was later that year when my Grampy came to my Grammy and said, “Venezuela.” At the time their missions board was pushing Ecuador in the wake of the martyrdom of Jim Elliot, Nate Saint and the others, but God’s plan was different for my grandparents. They went to Venezuela and ironically the farm boy ended up in the middle of the urban sprawl of Caracas.

There my grandfather, who was still terrified of public speaking, preached his first sermon in Spanish. He labored in Venezuela for the next eighteen years. His adventures while preaching the gospel included pulling an anaconda from a church member’s toilet. Ironic, since his only fear larger than public speaking was snakes. He visited the Venezuelan villages of the amazon, flew over Angel Falls, and even protected my grandmother from a drug cartel that stopped them on the highway between Caracas and Maracay, and dragged her from the car.

That story goes they were stopped, my grandmother was dragged from the vehicle, with a knife to her throat. My grandfather, did not think twice, that was his girl. He grabbed a steering wheel club from the van and ran around the front yelling as loudly as he could, while swinging the club. The story goes the men scattered, whether it was shock of seeing a missionary yelling like a mad man, or divine intervention, both of them escaped with their lives and the van.

When I was eight years old, I got to go with my grandparents to Venezuela to take part in their ministry. I visited barrios with my grandpa and watched him love on the people. I helped them prepare meals to invite dozens of church people into their home. It was from him I learned church is not a building; it is people. It is community. It is family.

In 2001, God saw fit to allow my Grampy to suffer a brain aneurysm. He would spend the next five days in a Venezuelan hospital on the verge of death. When he finally came home the doctor in the hospital in Colorado told us that if he had not passed yet, he was optimistic about him making it to rehab, but that it was unlikely he would ever walk again.

Before this, I had been slightly intimidated by my grandpa’s stoic demeanor. But over the next two years, my grandpa became my friend. We would sit and watch westerns. As a farm boy he loved The Lone Ranger, Rifleman, and Bonanza. I would make us tea. (he hated coffee) There we would sit in the den of our house, watching those old shows and talking about the lessons they were trying to instill.

Therapy was hard, and he lived in constant nerve pain. His sight was so damaged from the brain injury that he could not read his Bible. He took to listening to it on tape. He never complained, but he would sit and rub his dead limbs and the family learned. Those were the times he was suffering.

By a miracle God led them to an ophthalmologist in Pueblo, Colorado, who worked with my grandpa to restore much of his sight. And he did walk, haltingly, painfully, and with a cane, but he did walk again.

In 2003 they returned to Venezuela, where they stayed until Maduro's policies forced them to leave in 2007. It was during this time that my family moved to Oklahoma, and I began to struggle with my faith. When my grandparents returned to the States for medical checks and furlough in 2004, my mother sent me to live with them for the next four months. My questions concerned her. I wanted to know how you could know it was real. How could you know it wasn’t made up.

It was my grandpa who took the time to love on me. He would sit with me for hours, pointing to the scriptures. He never got frustrated he would speak to me with so much love in his heart, and deep concern in his voice. He prayed for hours on end for my soul, even fasting at one point due to his burden. I grew so used to seeing him in his chair, poring over the Word with a magnifying glass, I would often see him there in my mind’s eye, even after he was gone.

It was on that trip that I met God as my God, and not just my Savior. It was my grandpa’s prayers and wrestling that brought me home. When I went to Bible College, I became the in-home caregiver for my cousin Randall, who lived at my grandparents’ house. I saw my grandpa every day. Made him lunch and more than once my homework assignments sparked fervent and sharpening conversations about the Bible.

If there was one book he loved best, Grampy loved God’s word. He would get this glow on his face when we would talk about Jesus. It invited the person with whom he was talking to want to know more about the Galilean who had saved a farm boy and used him in the lives of hundreds of Venezuelans. His awe, his passion, his pursuits were always to fall deeper in love with Jesus.

My grandpa went to his Home in 2011, and I still miss him today. I will often open God’s word, find a nugget of gold that seems exactly for me, and ache to call him. He listened. He loved. He obeyed God. And he never lost the wonder that God would take an imperfect Farm Boy and use him to build his Kingdom. Part of who I am today was deeply shaped by this quiet, gentle man, who was faithful.

Faithful to the Finish, Faithful to the Call

Looking back, I realize these men taught me that faithfulness is rarely spectacular. It is mostly ordinary obedience repeated over a lifetime. Neither my grandpa nor my great-grandpa got long on this earth by the world’s standards. But the mark they left, in the short time they had is still paying out dividends today.

One of my professors in Bible College, whom we all called Coach Thomas once said.

“The best way to spend your life is to invest it in something that will outlast it.”

In my May Fourth article It’s Not How You Start—It’s How You Finish I wrote:

It is because I have had many examples on how that is done. Leaving with nothing left is my goal. It is no accident I used the picture of the Alamo to illustrate this article. Those men laid it all down, to buy Sam Houston the time.

So too these men that I will be sharing in this three-part series, have given so much for souls; to buy them time, to pray for them, to love on them, to invest in them when it cost them comfort, fame, wealth, and time. I am one of those souls, and I will always be grateful for that sacrifice.

To these men I say thank you. Thank you for being faithful to the finish, and faithful to the call. Thank you for holding the fort.

The sky is grey, clouds hang oppressive over the beach. Through the fog comes the sound of engines, hundreds of vessels prepare for the largest land invasion of the second world war. Tens of thousands of men hold their collective breath as the ramps lower on their boats. They grip their rifles, some take a last puff on a cigarette, some stare at the beach knowing this will be their last day. Some pray.

Eighty years later:

The sky is grey outside the window, inside a lone lamp illuminates the room. In a chair sits the man of the house. Bible open on his lap, steam rises from the cup in his hand. The crackle of onion skin paper breaks the silence as he turns another page. As he finishes his time reading, he closes the book, kneels at his chair, and enters the battle field.

What is a hero?

According to Webster’s 1828 Dictionary

1. A man of distinguished valor, intrepidity or enterprise in danger

2. A great, illustrious or extraordinary person

I pause on that important two letter word. OR

Our modern ideal for heroism generally consists of the words, “enterprise in danger” or “great and illustrious.” To be a hero in society, the world says, you must have either paid the ultimate sacrifice or be known for acting bravely in the face of grave danger. But if you ask a child who his hero is, if he has any relationship with his father, he will reply with one word. “Daddy.”

So which is it?

The correct answer is both, and that answer depends on perspective.

The men who stormed the beaches of Normandy, parachuted into the hedgerows, and paid the ultimate price in blood were undoubtedly heroes. So too is the man who lays down his own ambitions to pour out his life in service to Jesus.

Call of Duty: Excerpt from White Harvest Media’s Romans Field Manual

Romans 12:1

This calling does not look the same for any man. Every man’s terrain is different.

• Different people

• Different occupations

• Different time in history

Yet every man is called to sacrifice himself.

• To take up his cross. Luke 9:23, Matthew 16:24, Mark 8:34

• To die daily. I Corinthians 15:31

• Be crucified with Christ. Galatians 2:20

• Take on the sacrificial-servant mindset of Jesus. Philippians 2:5-8

• Present his body a living sacrifice. Romans 12:1

• Be transformed by the renewing of his mind. Romans 12:2

• Be sober and vigilant. 1 Peter 5:8

• Endure Hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. 2 Timothy 2:3

• Disentangle himself from the affairs of this life. 2 Timothy 2:4

• Watch and stand fast, be strong in the Spirit. 1 Corinthians 16:13

• Rule well his own spirit. Proverbs 16:32

• Show the Love of Jesus. John 15:13

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FIELD EXERCISE: THE LIVING SACRIFICE

Mission:
Present yourself to God as a living sacrifice.

Scripture:
Romans 12:1–2

Supporting Orders:

• Luke 9:23 — “Take up his cross daily...”

• 1 Corinthians 15:31 — “I die daily.”

• Galatians 2:20 — “I am crucified with Christ...”

• Philippians 2:5 — “Let this mind be in you...”

• 1 Peter 5:8 — “Be sober, be vigilant.”

Situation

The world honors dramatic sacrifice.

A man who dies in battle is remembered.

A man who spends decades dying to himself often goes unnoticed.

Yet Scripture calls believers to become living sacrifices. Unlike the sacrifices of the Old Testament, living sacrifices have a unique challenge:

They can climb off the altar.

Objective

Identify one area of your life where self still demands to rule.

Offer that area back to Christ in practical obedience.

Enemy Resistance

Expect resistance in the form of:

• Pride

• Comfort

• Bitterness

• Self-preservation

• Lust

• Anger

• Fear

• Spiritual apathy

The flesh rarely surrenders quietly.

Field Exercise

Ask yourself:

Where am I most tempted to choose myself over obedience?

Then choose one practical act of surrender today.

Examples:

• Apologize first.

• Forgive someone who has wronged you.

• Turn off the screen and engage your family.

• Pray with your wife.

• Read Scripture before entertainment.

• Refuse the hidden sin no one else sees.

• Serve without being noticed.

• Encourage rather than criticize.

• Stay faithful in ordinary responsibilities.

• Ask for help and confess where you have failed.

Debrief

At the end of the day, ask:

• Where did I climb off the altar?

• Where did grace sustain obedience?

• What must I surrender again tomorrow?

Operational Reality

Dead sacrifices remain where they are placed.

Living sacrifices must return willingly.

Every morning offers another opportunity to say:

“Yes, Lord.”

Not because yesterday’s surrender was insufficient,

but because His mercies are new every morning.

The Christian life is not won in one heroic moment.

It is forged through thousands of ordinary acts of faithfulness.

The mission remains the same:

Present yourself to God.

Again.

I am honored that you’ve joined me in this little corner of the internet.

Today is release day.

White Harvest Access is now live, including the foreword, dedication, and first chapter of my novella inspired by the 1960 classic The Magnificent Seven.

This story is especially dear to me because it is dedicated to my father—a man who taught me what faithful leadership looks like by simply staying.

Click here to Read NONE

If you take the time to read it, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Whether you loved it, found areas that could be stronger, or simply want to share your reaction, your feedback helps me grow as a writer.

Thank you for being here.

— Jess

s

The sun sinks in the west, daylight fading into twilight. The breeze carries the faint scent of smoke and cooking meat. The shepherd picks up his harp, strums the strings and tests his voice. A good day by all accounts. He reaches for his supper and hears the disturbance in the flock. Suddenly, resting sheep scatter in noise and fright, and a lone lamb bleats painfully.

The shepherd does not hesitate. Taking his sling in hand and loading it with a stone, he sprints toward the retreating shadow of the thieving predator. Within striking distance the shepherd lets his stone fly. The lamb drops to the earth and the wounded lion turns with a roar. The shepherd stands his ground, despite the very real danger to himself. He grips his knife, as the big cat advances. With a ferocious roar of his own the shepherd reaches for the lion’s beard. With a violence born of cold fury, the shepherd buries his knife deep, ending the threat.

He steps back and with shaking hands sheaths his knife. He wipes the blood from his hands, walking to the lamb. With gentleness that belies the violence in which he just participated, the shepherd picks her up, speaking in soothing tones and tending to her injuries.

Such is the scene painted of 1 Samuel 17:35.

A man who did not go seeking battle, yet when the fight came to his doorstep he proved himself more than capable of ending the threat.

What makes a good man?

Using scripture one can determine with certainty that a good man is not:

• brave

• competent

• masculine

• wealthy

• merely moral

While every good man will possess these traits, they do not make him good.

Jesus was very clear in Mark 10:18 There is none good but one, that is, God.

Therefore, any goodness a man displays will first originate from God.

According to scripture a good man is a wise man, one who fears God, rejects evil, calls wickedness what it is. He is:

• A man who aligns his thinking with God’s thinking. Psalm 1

• Faithful. Noah, Boaz, Joseph, Daniel

• a sacrificial giver, of his time, his wealth, his care. He is a shepherd of those under his influence. John 10:11

• Bears in his actions the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Galatians 5:22-23. Goodness appears right beside gentleness and temperance.

• A good steward. He watches, he guards, he feeds, he sacrifices, he stays.

• He repents: And this is perhaps the most important one on the list. A good man is not a perfect man, rather he is a man humble enough to admit when he is wrong and offers vulnerable recompense.

In all, a good man is one who faces God and orders his life accordingly.

The Lions of Mercer

Now for the book review. White Harvest Media is featuring a book this month that speaks to men choosing to do right, and staying faithful in it despite the danger and cost.

John Lovell and Harrison Kone teamed up to write The Lions of Mercer. A military thriller exploring the truth of a dark world, where politics and optics are more important than protecting the innocent. When the CIA tells him to abandon the daughter of his Afghani interpreter, Micah Mercer decides Rangers do not leave children behind.

What The Lions of Mercer does particularly well.

1. Realism.

Micah is not a saint, not even close. No spoilers, but suffice it to say, John Lovell has an author letter at the beginning of his book explaining why he published this book himself and why it is not marketed as Christian fiction.

There is military culture, brotherhood, violence and human brokenness in stark detail.

2. Sacrifice

The decisions that Mercer and his team makes ultimately cost them good standing with Federal agencies. A forced resignation, the real danger of losing precious NGO status, even death. They cannot save everyone, despite trying.

3. Endurance

Despite the grief, Mercer and his men do not quit until the job is done.

4. Morally grey characters

Perhaps the most interesting character in the whole story is not Mercer. It is the Australian mercenary. A man obviously on the wrong side of the fight, yet compelling precisely because of that. There again no spoilers, but the authors did a fantastic job of capturing the outlook of a man who would be capable of great good if his moral compass were not so skewed.

My quibbles

I gave The Lions of Mercer four stars.

There were times in the narrative I felt that military culture was over explained, or gear was listed more like an advertisement rather than naturally flowing from the story. I felt that Micah’s redemption arc was a bit rushed, especially where his relationship with his wife was concerned. Lastly, I found the leniency of the final oversight decision to be more “happy ending” than perhaps would be realistic.

That being said. I genuinely enjoyed the book, because it was a good story, with the highest of stakes and it kept me keyed in until the last page.

Lions of Mercer

Why White Harvest chose to feature this one

Men need good fiction, they especially need good fiction in an arena where there is a gap.

Christian fiction should ultimately serve the purpose of drawing readers back to the truth of the Creator and the principles of his Word. This story, told from a Christian perspective, put me in mind of King David. He was far from perfect, he sinned grievously, after he allowed the world to soften him. Yet God described him as a man after His own heart.

As a warrior, David committed extreme acts of violence. As a man he controlled his capability with extraordinary acts of restraint. He suffered immensely with intense emotion, fury, sorrow, love, and lust. Yet so many psalms begin in darkness and end with God’s light.

Micah Mercer is not King David, but he is a man seeking to do righteousness with the portion he has been given. This is why I chose the book. Men need heroes still, fictional though they may be. Lovell and Kone gave us one.

June’s Theme

Stories matter because they give us examples to remember. This month, both of the projects I am launching wrestle with that question in different ways.

NONE

My father introduced me to spaghetti westerns when I was young. I was named for the Jessica in The Man From Snowy River, with Kirk Douglas. I read my first Louis L'Amour when I was eight. The grit of cowboy culture was prevalent in our home. When I was fourteen I watched the 1960 version of The Magnificent Seven. Over the next two years I would watch that movie dozens of times. The scene from that movie that stuck with me the most was the quote delivered by Steve McQueen’s character Vin. He is responding to Chico, the youngest of the gunslingers, who says, “Your gun has gotten you everything you have. Isn’t that true?”

Vin replies. “Yeah, sure everything. After a while you can call bartenders and farrow dealers by their first name. Maybe two hundred of ‘em. Rented rooms you live in, maybe five hundred. Meals you eat in hash houses a thousand.”

Then the iconic line.

“Home, none, wife, none, kid… none. Prospects zero.”

That hesitation gets me every time, because it is the hesitation of regret.

So in my early adulthood I decided to give Vin a story. Dedicated to the man who shouldered the burden of responsibility to stay and raise my sisters and me. The first chapter in that book drops Friday.

White Harvest Access Serialized fiction

Tristan’s Reckoning

The second launch is the next book in Songs of Redemption. Crown Prince Tristan Aurelio Cassian Valmor, born to be the next king of Gershan, grows from boyhood into a man.

His crown demands everything. Even what should never be sacrificed.

He was raised to become king.
Not to love.

Tristan has spent his life mastering control—of his kingdom, his future, and himself. But when he binds himself in secret to a foreign maid, he sets in motion a chain of events that threatens everything he was born to protect.

Exiled through betrayal and hunted at sea, Tristan is stripped of title, power, and position—forced to survive as nothing more than a captain under another man’s command. And when the truth of the woman he loves is finally revealed, it is far worse than he imagined.

Because Alana is not who he thought she was.

And the enemies circling his crown have been waiting for this weakness.

When war comes and his kingdom begins to fracture, Tristan fights his way back to reclaim what is his. But victory comes at a cost he cannot ignore.

His crown—or his family.

And this time, he may not be able to keep both.

Tristan’s Reckoning is a story of power, betrayal, and the cost of choosing what truly matters - When who you were trained to be collides with who you were created to be.

Tristan's Reckoning Pre Order

Men in story

Every character featured this month wrestles with the same truth from different perspectives. Who are you when God strips everything, when life is hard, when danger comes?

As I write this month, I will be exploring the stories of the good men in my life who have influenced me. Men who loved, men who gave, men who protected.

I am very excited to share their journeys with you, and maybe you’ll find a story worth sharing with a good man in your life.

Happy June everyone.

— Jess

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The air is cold. Fog off the Potomac creeps across green grass, trees and white headstones. The smell of fresh rain hangs in the air and a slight breeze tugs at jackets and trousers. The mood is somber and not one person speaks.

The sharp sounds of a rifle inspection are the only things to be heard in the stillness. It is broken by a barked command. Two soldiers exchange places on the black mat, and with that the ceremony closes. The tomb of the unknown soldier, guarded twenty four hours a day, every day.

The white mausoleum glows startlingly white as the sun momentarily breaks through the clouds. Then it is gone again.

I pause on the word: Unknown.

More than their dogtags

The truth is that the men entombed at that place in Arlington were known. The tragedy of their end is that they remain shrouded in mystery of their identity. So we have honored them as best as we are able.

It does not however stop my grief at the idea that there was likely someone out there who missed them. They were not unknown in life. It is sorrowful then that falling in battle meant being unnamed in death.

In 1916 our American military began using dog tags as a means to identify those incapacitated or killed in action. Service members are issued two, one to stay with the body, the second for records. A safe low tech way of keeping track of casualties, and their basic information. A system that has likely kept multitudes of service members from the fate of being buried unknown.

I cannot help but think however, that these men and women are more than their system identifiers. Just as the men inside the tomb of the unknown soldier were more than their own designations. They were sons, perhaps husbands, perhaps fathers. They had dreams, and lives, and friends.

They were known.

Carried forward in memory

I often speak of my dead. I believe it is healthy when they come to mind to honor their impact on my life. I am a collector of stories and a bit of a romantic so perhaps that is why. Their story mattered, their life mattered, their impact has influence.

This Memorial Day I wanted to do something as a tribute. To honor the fallen, to remember more than just their deaths, to remember their legacy that they left.

I reached out to my many friends who are veterans and asked if they would like space to remember a name, and something unique about the person they named. I was honored and privileged to be entrusted with three names who left an impression. Whose lives meant more than just the sum of their death.

“Dave was killed in a mission overseas. We dated off and on for ten years, and while we went on to marry other people. Dave became my best friend.”

“When Spirit03 went down in Desert Storm, I lost several friends. All the gunship guys had come together, sensing that something was wrong even before we heard the news. We lost great men that day, courageous and bold. Paul was the kind of man who makes our country strong.”

“Math was my spotter. I called him Math because he could calculate figures in his head at unbelievable speed. Wind, distance… When the attack on the USS Cole occurred, everyone else was running away, Math ran toward the danger.”

I want to personally thank the individuals who allowed me to include these men and their stories. They sound like amazing people whose lives rippled to touch mine indirectly.

No Man Is An Island

A famous phrase from Meditation XVII in Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, written by the English poet and cleric John Donne in 1624.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee."

The prose asserts that no individual is self-sufficient and that every person’s death diminishes the whole of mankind.

I did not have to know these men to thank God for their lives. They touched those who have touched me. Perhaps that is why I am so contemplative this Memorial Day. Perhaps it is my own grief and loss, perhaps it is both.

Whatever the reason, I hope you will take time to carry the names this holiday. Remember them, toast them, and bless them for their sacrifices. I encourage you to say their names. To remember the jokes, the smiles, the fact that they loved pancakes or waffles. Whether they perished in battle, came home wounded, or never quite made it home whole; they loved, they are loved, and they touched you, and in so doing touched the lives of countless others.

I wish you all a safe and blessed Memorial Day.

~ Jess

Title quoted from Jim Darenkamp U.S. NAVY (RET.)

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Monuments

The black is so polished I can see my face. Thousands of people gather at the wall, using charcoal pencils and scraps of paper to copy names. Behind me sits the Washington Monument and the Reflecting Pool on the mall in D.C. I am astounded by the amount of names. I search meticulously for the name of my great uncle killed in Vietnam.

Stone shaped to remember, memorialize the 58,318 recognized casualties of that war. There is a reason we mark such things. The stone will long outlast the men and women who gather daily to collect names. There is precedent for using geological material to honor moments of great importance.

In the book of Joshua, the new leader of Israel is instructed to gather twelve stones to pile in the midst of the parted Jordan River, and another set of twelve to set on the west side after the miraculous crossing. Joshua even tells them why.

That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones? Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.

Lively Stones

It is interesting then that in the book of First Peter, saints are called living stones. The imagery of a Keystone and subsequent living stones are used to describe a beautiful house of which God is the architect. Another monument, this time to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross for the purpose of redemption of mankind.

Both monuments are symbols of the grand mercy and grace of our God. One memorial was compiled by men to remember. The other is actively being shaped and built as a tribute to The Keystone, the Lord Jesus.

The Shaping

When I consider my life, I am frankly awed. Not because God has a plan for my life, though He absolutely does. I am more amazed that I have been shaped to live a life to suit God’s plan. That He has made me to be a supporting character in the narrative He has written from creation. The story is thousands of years old, with millions and perhaps billions of saints who have gone before me and yet, He still wants to use me.

And I am not the only one.

For those of us who have in Peter’s words believed on Jesus Christ, He is the stone most precious. The reason for our life, our breath, our joy, our everything is the why we are shaped.

Read that again!

I know I needed to do so. Because let’s be honest, shaping hurts. It chisels away at things we would rather hold. It conforms us to be useful for His glory.

We are not the key— He is. And the fact that we are included in the monument He is building should humble everyone of us.

It is the shaping that gets us there. And for each of us that shaping was different, in this beautiful building not one of us are the same.

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The Instruments

When I think of what God used to shape me, I find nouns; People, places and things.

Some of them I’ve mentioned in past posts, My mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. Some I will mention in the future. (June we celebrate fathers and for me that includes good men who influenced me)

The Person

But as we near Memorial day there is one man I do want to mention. A man I recently said “see you later” to. My uncle Neil. Air Force veteran, Competent, always smiling and a habit of pronouncing my name Jess-eek-uh instead of the common Jess-i-kuh. I can still hear it when I close my eyes. From my earliest memories, I felt safe with him.

Since my own grandparents, Neil’s brother and sister in law, were missionaries I spent more time in his home as an adopted granddaughter rather than a niece. In 2009, when I set out from Oklahoma where I reside back to my native Colorado, for medical appointments pertaining to my traumatic brain injury. My uncle called me every ninety minutes just to make sure I was safe and still on my way. He loved me, and I never doubted it.

The Places

Being homeschooled through all twelve grades had certain advantages. One of which was the ability to pack up school work and travel. When I was a senior in high school I got to travel with my missionary grandparents on their furlough up and down the east coast of the United States. We visited from Maine to Virgina and every state in between except Vermont.

On that trip the place that stuck out the most. Gettysburg. You could feel the sorrow. Like the wind itself respected the fallen. We walked the fields, climbed Little Round Top. The hair still stands up on my arms when I think about it.

My Grandpa made that portion of the trip, as well as the tour of D.C. possible. Arlington, The Vietnam wall, The WWII memorial. The names and rows of gravestones that never seemed to end. Those shaped me.

They were people, and the thought I had on that hill that day is forever burned in my memory. It sobered me to tears. They were more than their uniforms and dog tags. They had families, and preferences and favorite songs. We set headstones to mark them, so their names may not be forgotten. That experience was a chisel that shaped the way I still think today.

Markers

These are some of my memorial stones. Good memories that shaped me as much as hard ones.

Nothing was wasted, they all served a purpose. And the Father isn’t done yet. He is still working on me. Making me what He planned for me to be. In the midst of that I get to be used as an instrument in His service, in shaping the living stones around me.

May the Master Builder find me faithful to the call, and joyous in the opportunity, both to shape, and be shaped in this design He is creating until the day He calls me Home too.

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The wind rustles the branches overhead, and somewhere deeper in the cemetery a cardinal chirps softly. It is peaceful here in the way only cemeteries can be. Quiet. Still. The sun dazzles against pale stone as I stare at the dates and dashes etched beneath my feet.

I place the flowers carefully and blink hard once.

“I miss you, Mom,” I whisper.

Mother’s Day is supposed to be a celebration, and it is. But sometimes celebration and sorrow sit in the same pew.

My oldest daughter slips her hand into mine, always sensitive to the pain of others.

“Is Sunshine buried here too?” she asks softly.

I look down at her, tears clouding my smile.

“No, baby. Sunshine is in heaven with Jesus.”

“And Nana,” she adds.

I nod.

“Yes. And Nana.”

Sunshine was my first child. The one who made me a mother. I found out I was pregnant the same week my mother was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer.

Two weeks later, I miscarried.

The Matriarch

At thirty-six years old, I am the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter in my family line. An odd thing to realize at my age. My mother has been gone ten years now. My grandmother went home to Jesus last June.

Mother’s Day feels different now.

I come from a long line of women who loved Jesus deeply.

Some of my earliest memories are of my great-grandmother sitting on her daybed in our Colorado home, her Bible open in her lap while morning light streamed through the window. She would see me lingering in the doorway and smile.

“Come pray with me, Jessica.”

And I would.

My Grammy was a missionary to South America, the survivor of a coup in Chile and cartel carjacking attempts in Venezuela. She was loud in all the best ways, full of joy and dry humor. The kind of woman who would grin and ask, “Why pray when you can worry?”

Dementia took her slowly. Cancer sped the process. When she finally entered Jesus’ presence, I sat at her feet singing “Coming Home,” and those gathered around her nearly missed the exact moment she slipped away because it was so peaceful.

My mother was gentler.

She homeschooled me and my sisters. She taught me to read, sew, garden, cook, bake, and keep house. But more importantly, she taught me Scripture. She prayed for my soul daily. When I was three, she led me to Jesus. When I was fourteen and full of questions, she sent me traveling the West Coast with my grandparents.

Somewhere along that road, Jesus stopped being merely my Savior and became my King.

In 2014, pain in my mother’s spine finally drove her to the doctor. Stage four breast cancer, metastasized to the bone.

Every Wednesday after teaching fifth grade boys, I drove to her house. She became my best friend.

She lived long enough to meet my first rainbow baby, my son D. In February of 2016, she admitted quietly that she was afraid to let go because she worried about my father. I promised her he would be cared for. Two weeks later, she went home to heaven.

The Children No One Sees

I have nine children.

Five wait for me in heaven, perfect and sinless.

Four are here in my arms, beautiful little sinners whom I have the privilege of discipling.

After losing Sunshine, joy became complicated.

When I became pregnant with D, I hesitated to even test. Fear has a way of stealing innocence from motherhood. But six weeks passed, and my ultrasound showed a tiny little boy kicking and squirming.

The first time I felt him flutter, it stole my breath.

Alive. Whole.

He was born healthy that August, our rainbow after loss. But by February, my husband had lost his job in the energy sector, my mother had entered hospice, and D was hospitalized with methemoglobinemia after nitrates in squash caused his blood to stop carrying oxygen correctly.

The doctors told us seventy-two percent conversion is fatal.

My son was admitted at sixty-eight.

I am convinced the prayers of the saints carried us through those days.

D survived. He was released just in time for us to rush to my mother’s bedside before she slipped into eternity.

Life kept moving because life always does.

There were more pregnancies after that. More hope. More fear. More tiny lines appearing on tests while I held my breath instead of celebrating.

The Dream

Blessing came next.

I lost her at ten weeks.

The night before, I dreamed I was underwater above a rusted shipwreck while a baby sank just out of my reach. The next morning during prayer, peace settled over me alongside the distinct understanding that I would not keep this child either.

I birthed her at home and held her in my hand, barely an inch long.

Two arms. Two legs. A face just large enough for features. She was beautiful because she was mine.

We buried her beneath the pines in a place sacred to my husband and me.

Then came Valentine. By then grief had numbed me so deeply that when I lost that baby too, I hardly cried at all. That frightened me more than the miscarriage itself.

The Miracle

When I became pregnant again, panic arrived with the bleeding. My HCG numbers dropped sharply. I expected silence at the ultrasound. Instead, the room filled with the fluttering whoosh of a heartbeat. I broke right there as relief and disbelief tangled together.

My sweet girl A survived scare after scare. Water on her brain. Calcium in her heart. More ultrasounds. More waiting. More prayers whispered in fear.

Then, two days before my twenty-seventh birthday, labor hit hard and fast.

My husband delivered her on our bathroom floor while horrified young EMTs stood nearby trying to catch up with reality.

She was beautiful.

The Surprise

I told everyone we were done for a while.

I was exhausted. Five pregnancies in three years had left my body and mind wrung thin. I loved my children fiercely, but I was tired in places sleep could not fix.

Then another faint line appeared.

I cried.

Not because I did not love the baby already growing inside me, but because I was overwhelmed. Gratitude and exhaustion can coexist. So can joy and sorrow.

J arrived after twenty-seven hours of labor, grumpy from the very beginning like a tiny old man trapped in a baby’s body. God knew exactly what I needed when He gave me that little boy.

But by then I had reached the edge of myself. My husband worked constantly. I was drowning in diapers, speech delays, hormones, and the strange loneliness that can settle over motherhood even inside marriage.

For the first time, I truly thought we might be done.

The Twins

Eventually we decided to try once more. When I became pregnant again, I let myself feel excitement. The nurse congratulated me after my bloodwork, and I drove home smiling.

Then the cramping started. The bleeding. The waiting.

Again.

My numbers rose strangely this time. Then, four days before Christmas, sharp pain exploded through my shoulder.

I already knew.

Emergency ultrasound confirmed two babies growing inside my fallopian tube.

No heartbeats.

I thank God often that He took them home Himself rather than asking my husband and me to make impossible decisions.

I was rushed into emergency surgery.

That was the worst day of my life.

Mentally I stayed steady. I focused on Christmas music, my children, ordinary things. But trauma settles into the body whether we acknowledge it or not.

Six weeks later I returned for a follow-up appointment and had a panic attack in the hospital parking lot simply from seeing the building.

I named them Butterfly and Sparrow.

Because the Father watches the sparrows.

Because He transforms caterpillars into butterflies.

Because somehow, even on the worst day of my life, Jesus remained King.

That loss broke me open, but it also drew me nearer to Him than I had ever been before.

Sassy Pants

We waited a long time before trying again.

My body needed healing. My heart did too.

Then in September of 2021, after two exhausting weeks of prodromal labor, P was born at home.

For years September 11 had carried grief for me.

Now it also carried joy.

This little girl sparkles. She teaches us to laugh, to slow down, to find delight in ordinary things. After her birth, both my husband and I finally felt peace about closing this chapter of our lives.

She was our completion.

Bethan and Child Loss

Perhaps that is why I wrote Bethan the way I did.

In the middle of her story, she loses the son she loves most in the world. That chapter wounded me to write because grief is no longer theoretical to me. I know what it is to carry children in both my arms and my heart.

But I also know this:

God has never abandoned me in my sorrow.

Not once.

With every loss, He drew nearer. He sustained me on days I did not think I could breathe. He placed people beside me who understood grief intimately. He reminded me again and again that suffering is not evidence of His absence.

It was the catalyst that kept drawing me back to Him.

So this Mother’s Day, I celebrate the women who came before me.

I celebrate the children I can hold and the ones I cannot.

And I grieve too.

Because celebration can still mourn absence.

I will probably always count four little heads climbing into the car while feeling in some deep place that someone is missing.

On those days, I whisper a quiet prayer.

“Hug them for me, please. Tell them I love them.”

I will see them someday. Of this I am certain because I have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ.

If you are a mother carrying grief this Mother’s Day, I am so sorry. And if you are struggling to breathe beneath the weight of loss, turn toward Jesus.

He is the only reason I survived mine.

The blessed hope I have in Christ keeps me discipling the children He left in my care while trusting Him with the ones already home.

Because God sees my grief.

He sees my joy.

He sees me.

And every woman, whether this day brings sorrow, joy, or both, is fully seen by Him too.

The crowd grows silent as the runners take their marks on the track. Heads up, muscles engaged. The crack of the starting pistol reverberates through the arena as the contestants rise from their crouch and spring forward into motion. The crowd roars with excitement as the announcer’s voice fills the air.

The race has begun, there can only be one champion.

Preparation for that prize began long before the runner ever leapt off his mark. And it is that discipline that will determine—not his start, but his finish.

On My Mark

White Harvest Media was not born in a grand scheme. It honestly wasn’t even a thought to me until sometime last year. Writing, dreaming up stories and connecting them to biblical truths was how I often passed the time washing dishes or folding the laundry. Publishing, editing, formatting—learning KDP, IngramSpark, MailerLite—never even felt possible

In truth I have always wanted to write a book or ten. Motherhood, homeschooling and homesteading had a way of keeping me busy enough, that writing was a “maybe someday” for a good while. Then last year, my faith got put to the test in a painful and sometimes terrifying way.

Get Set..

When I was eighteen I was rear ended on the freeway. I was at a dead stop, the driver behind me was going sixty miles per hour. The accident left me with an occluded right shoulder, and traumatic brain injury that would go undiagnosed for the next nine months. Those days were dark and it is only by God’s grace that I am alive today to tell my story.

At a routine appointment, my neuro-ophthalmologist tested my midline. Something was off. An MRI confirmed it—my midline had shifted fourteen degrees to the right.
It was a miracle I was still walking.

Special lenses corrected the shift but the damage persists, flaring in times of stress. Last year was such a time. My husband and I were preparing to downsize from a large ranch house, to a four hundred square foot fifth wheel. We wanted to be debt free, including the mortgage. We wanted him home more, tired of a job that had demanded fifty and sixty hour weeks for twelve years of our marriage. This was our chance.

We remodeled the fifth wheel, I worked on it on weekdays after schooling and he worked on it on weekends. Every day for two months. Then in January 2025. My body rebelled. I would spend the next one hundred ninety days in bed. My TBI had flared. Migraines, memory gaps, and the kind of thousand yard stare that frightened my family became my normal.

To hold my thoughts steady, I had to write.

It helped.

It wasn’t always pretty, but it was story. Written words bridged the gap between what I could not articulate in reality, and what I needed my family to know. Processing anything required committed time to putting words to paper. The more I did it, the better I was able to focus.

I drafted over thirty stories last year. All unique, all integrating a different aspect of faith in the God who is bigger than trauma and setbacks.

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Go!

Bethan’s Identity was not the first of the stories I drafted. It had actually been sitting in my filing cabinet since that accident eighteen years ago. It had reflected the darkness of that time, and I was determined to never publish it. At least not as it was. Too dark, too broken, too uncomfortable.

I told myself it would require too much of my reader, that I would have to clean it up, make it easier.

With maturity I have found the easy thing is rarely what endures. In the words of Abbie Halberstadt I have learned that “hard is not the same as bad.” I even let one of my character’s quote her in the book.

So where does White Harvest Media come in to all this? The truth is that I could independently publish my stories and be content. But last year, God was working on something else too. Not only do I enjoy writing, I enjoy helping others to write as well. A veteran with a memoir, a missionary with translation, a fellow author with wanting to take his books to audio.

The time I had spent on my back had left me with hours of time to research, methods, practices, and advice from those who had trailblazed the way to independent publishing success.

By the end of last year I was back on my feet. My husband and I sold our house in just five days. We are now living tiny with our four beautiful children, on land we own outright. A portion of proceeds from our house sale purchased my ISBN’s to own my own distribution rights.

All of this has prepared the way for me to start an imprint dedicated to telling the kind of stories that have weight. Stories that walk the reader through the cost of endurance when it would be easier to quit. Stories that question the lenses through which we view the the world. Stories committed to truth; Honest about sin, showcasing redemption and relentless about sanctification.

Press Toward the Prize

White Harvest has started well. But the start never matters like the finish. There will be other flares. Other setbacks, more trials. The work will be slow, tedious and mundane at times. The excitement of a launch will fade when sales slide or bad reviews land.

But if White Harvest is to become anything useful to the God who gave me the idea. Then that endurance is measured in quiet moments, not the loud ones. The days when a migraine steals my breath, or the better portion of my time was rightly poured out on my family first; those are the days when faithfulness to calling has both cost and reward.

Because the measure of success in the Father’s economy is never finishing first—it’s finishing well. As for me, when I finish this race, I hope to leave with nothing left.

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The bell above the door rings, a chiming sound that echoes through the shop.

The light is warm as the air, and the whole place smells like coffee and paper and ink. Shelves full of books line the walls and floor.

An older man in spectacles and disheveled white hair looks up from his own book at the counter with a smile.

“Ah, how may I help you?” he asks, obviously eager to attend me on my journey through his literary keep.

His mission is singular: to guide me toward the book with a world that will hold my imagination captive. To stir my heart with truths hidden in narrative veins like treasure.

When I imagine printed books, that is the picture I see.

Cozy. Warm. Safe

Books Are Friends

Books were some of my earliest friends.

My mother read Blueberries for Sal, A Duck Named Ping, Cranberry Thanksgiving, and Marianne the Steam Shovel.

Circumstances in my life being as they were, I often found refuge from loneliness in the pages of Louis L’Amour, Zane Grey, or Gilbert Morris.

Odd choices for a child, perhaps.

But they were my father’s, and they were there on a shelf in the basement of our Colorado home.

As I grew older, Marguerite Henry replaced the westerns.

Misty of Chincoteague.
King of the Wind.
The Black Stallion series.

That was when books began to color my dreams.

I had a stallion in my imagination who came when I whistled.

It was not long before I began writing stories of my own.

Notebooks full of pirates, horses, noble ladies, and a curious fascination with spycraft.

Then on my tenth birthday I was given a hard back special edition copy of Black Beauty. Red cover, embossed title, and picture card, red ribbon for a place holder. That book, I read entirely through in one sitting and cried when it was done, for Beauty had become my friend and I mourned having to see his story end, despite his restful circumstances.

By the time I was a teenager, I had discovered sci-fi and fantasy, though I often returned to historical fiction.

Genre did not matter much.

I simply loved to read.

Authors challenged the way I saw the world. They pushed me to think, to research, to discover.

Every one of those stories was borrowed from a library, purchased from a bookstore, or gifted to me.

And every one of them helped shape the stories I now tell.

“Paper Made Me Slow Down.”

Then came digital books.

To be clear, I am grateful for them.

A Kindle opened access, convenience, affordability, and eventually helped make my own publishing possible.

But digital reading created a problem I never had before.

Excess.

Too many books.

Too many freebies.

Too many titles sitting unread.

And worse, a kind of noise.

I would finish one book and, with a click, begin another before the first had time to settle in my mind.

Stories still moved me.

Some still stayed.

But paper slowed me down.

Turning pages.

Feeling weight in my hands.

Seeing progress in the thickness of pages already read.

Holding a story long enough for it to sink deeper.

A screen has advantages.

But it cannot fully replace that.

Bethan's Identity Paperback

Print Is Still Popular

A A 2026 Pew Research study found 64% of U.S. adults read a print book in the past year, while 31% read an e-book and 26% listened to an audiobook. Print remains the only format used by a majority of Americans

Print books are still popular for a reason.

They invite focus.

They reduce distraction.

They engage memory differently.

They become gifts, keepsakes, companions, heirlooms.

And sometimes, they become old friends.

Digital gave me speed.

Print gave me presence.

Digital let me publish on a deadline.

Print let me hold my own work in my hands as a real book made of real paper.

And if you have ever opened a new book, breathed in the scent of ink and paper, and felt the quiet thrill of possibility—

Then you already understand the case for paper.

One of the most dangerous lies in the world is that nice equals good. It does not.

The serpent in the garden was, by modern definitions, nice to Eve. He offered an alternative perspective. Invited her to see differently. Questioned boundaries. He was pleasant and agreeable. Yet that niceness ended in death.

Many readers often expect a villain to be cruel right off. Some see that predation lurks behind a smile. Tarren is not a caricature, he is complex. Rather than write him with brutality from the start, I left him murky. Nice, but never kind.

Why Tarren Had To Be Nice

Tarren enters the story by stopping another man from harassing Bethan. He tells her where to stand in the auction pen. He buys her for more than she is worth. Once aboard his ship, he offers her a blanket, though none to the other slaves. He clothes her. Feeds her. Gives her gifts. He takes her ashore and buys what catches her eye in every port. To Bethan, there is the illusion of safety inside captivity. The illusion of freedom inside possession. The illusion of being chosen.

That is how Tarren earns trust. None of these things are kindness. They are strategy. He often asks Bethan personal questions. When she refuses, he does not rage. He smiles.

“I do not need to force you, Pet. I have time.”

Tarren is not kind. Tarren is controlled.

The Difference Between Nice And Kind

Nice

• Avoids discomfort

• Maintains image

• Gives to gain leverage

• Pleases when beneficial

• Uses gentleness transactionally

Kind

• Seeks another’s good

• Speaks truth when costly

• Protects without controlling

• Gives without demanding ownership

• Is gentle from character, not strategy.

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Why This Matters Beyond Fiction

I wrote him this way on purpose. Not because Tarren represents Satan, he doesn’t. No Tarren is the allegorical manifestation of a villain much closer to home. The fallen heart of man. Proverbs 18:12, Jeremiah 17:9, Matthew 15:19, and Mark 7:21 all warn of the capacity for destruction found in the human heart. But perhaps the one that sums it up is Proverbs 14:12-16.

There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, But the end thereof are the ways of death. Even in laughter the heart is sorrowful; And the end of that mirth is heaviness. The backslider in heart shall be filled with his own ways: And a good man shall be satisfied from himself. The simple believeth every word: But the prudent man looketh well to his going. A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: But the fool rageth, and is confident.

Scripture repeatedly warns that our hearts can deceive us. We call dangerous things destiny. We rename bondage as freedom. We baptize desire as wisdom.

Just as Tarren manipulates Bethan into feeling chosen and cared for, our hearts will justify, quantify and emote us into chains of slavery to sin and ruin. James sums up the seed of lust once planted in the human soul and the end is always death.

Our hearts naturally

• avoid discomfort,

• seek to make ourselves look better,

• give in hopes of return

• Practice cooperative rebellion when it is easier to get along

• And offer gentleness as a way of getting ahead

All of this results in pain, not just for us, but for those left in our wake. Our default setting is nice, we are our own worst predator and enemy. Tarren never needed chains or force to control Bethan. Our hearts rarely need chains either. Only lies repeated long enough to feel true.

Sometimes the worst thing God can let us have is what we think we want.

Bethan wanted to survive and it cost her everything. Thank God her story does not end there. Next week we look at the hero of my story. Tristan. And how Kindness is demonstrated by a heart clearly turned to the work of the Spirit.

Discover Bethan's Identity

Every man thinks he has more room than he does. Until one decision proves he doesn’t.

“Every sin ever committed—every sinner, under proper provocation, could commit.”
— Bob Jones Sr.

And it never stops with you.
It lands on the people who never chose it.

This is the truth of capability behind the story White Harvest just published.

Not a woman who set out to destroy her life—
but one who made a choice.

And then another.
And then another.

Until the cost was her freedom, her faith, and her very identity.

Until the chains forged by those decisions became a cage
that stripped her of everything she thought she knew—
about herself, and about God.

The chains are not accidental.
They are forged—choice by choice—
until ruin is no longer a possibility, but a direction.

Which Road Are You On?

There is a way that seems right to a man,
but its end is the way of death.

The phrase “follow your heart” should give a Christian pause.

Scripture is not vague about it:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked—who can know it?

Left unchecked, it does not lead us to life.
It leads us to justify what we already want.

And choices made in desperation rarely stay contained.

They spread.
They compound.
And result in disaster of our own making.

Join the Harvest

Narrowed Options

David chose where to stand.
And he chose wrong.

The man after God’s own heart learned the truth of James 1:14–15 the hard way.

He did not begin with adultery.

He began by putting down responsibility.

He sent his mighty men to war—
and stayed in Jerusalem.

That decision placed him somewhere he had no business being:

on a rooftop,
instead of in the field with his men.

Sin did not start on the rooftop.

It started with where he chose to stand—
or where he failed to stand.

This week I restacked a quote that resonated, and added this note:

When men don’t lead, someone else carries what they were never meant to.
And the longer that happens, the fewer choices everyone has left.
Sin doesn’t just wound.

It narrows.

David’s sin—and the sins of us all—do not stop with us.

Bathsheba lost her husband.
She lost her child.

David’s sons murdered one another.
His daughter was raped by her half-brother.

And like it so often does,
the cost fell hardest on the most vulnerable.

The women.
The children.
The ones who never chose it.

This is what sin does.

For God So Loved..

David reaped the consequences of his sin.

But his entire household had to eat the harvest.

And yet—God.

Stop there for a moment.

And yet, God.

Because on this day, we remember:

Jesus died for that too.

Bathsheba stood in the line of Christ.
So did David.
So did Rahab.
So did Tamar.
So did Ruth.

Not by accident.
Not by oversight.

Because we serve a Kinsman Redeemer.

A God who looked at the wreckage of sin and said,
I will pay for that.

David’s house was not the only one to eat a harvest.

Christ took that one too.

Not of grain—but of sin.
Not of one family—but of the entire world.

He took the wages we earned
and made them His own.

His sacrifice does not erase our consequences.
But it breaks the chains that bind us to them.

This is the truth that makes us free:

That Jesus Christ paid for our sin in full.

And the proof that it is finished—
is an empty tomb.

Jesus did not just reap the harvest.

He bought the field.

And we now reap what He has planted.

Choices have consequences.
Choices have weight.

But praise God—

we serve a Savior who is greater than both.

A God who stepped into the harvest with us,
took it on Himself,
and redeemed it—

for our good,
for the good of those around us,
and for His eternal glory.

Happy Resurrection Sunday everyone, because Jesus died for this too.

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