book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between!
Michael K. Reynolds is the writer and producer of Emmy and Telly
Award-winning film campaigns and has more than two decades of
experience in fiction, journalism, copywriting, and documentary production. He owns Global Studio, a marketing agency, and is also
an active leader in church and business, speaking in both ministry
and corporate settings. Michael lives with his wife and three children
in Reno, Nevada.
past as a U.S. Army deserter and living alone in the wilderness
of the Rocky Mountains in 1849. But after witnessing a deadly
stage coach crash, he finds purpose in the scattered wreckage -- a
letter with a picture of a beautiful and captivating woman named
Ashlyn living in San Francisco at the height of the Gold Rush.
Moved by her written plea for help, he abandons all and sets out on
an epic journey across the wild and picturesque American frontier.
While being pursued by those who want to hang him, Seamus
encounters fascinating characters including a young Pauite Indian
who makes the ultimate sacrifice in helping Seamus to cross the
snowy Yosemite Valley.
Battered but changed for the better, Seamus reaches San Francisco
on Christmas Eve as the city burns in the tragic fire of 1849. But
there is little time for rest, as an even greater, more harrowing
adventure involving Ashlyn is about to begin.
While Davin is on his surging journey,
his elder brother Seamus is now on the Oregon Trail with Winn and
Trip, travelers across the plains. Suddenly in their wake, is a herd
of mighty buffalo charging across in a thundering herd.
That would be a little unnerving.
I love these novels by Michael K.
Reynolds! So moving and entertaining. Featuring gripping suspense,
memorable characters and breathtaking settings. Michael K. Reynolds
is a fantastic historical fiction author. You don't want to miss this
trilogy ~ An Heirs of Ireland series ~ adventure, historical,
romantic suspense. Book One: Flight of the Earls, January 2013; Book
Two: In Golden Splendor, July 2013; Songs of the Shenandoah, January
2014. Wonderful in-depth writing, you will feel the breeze on your
face. ~ Half-Irish Kathleen
Chapter 1
MAN OF THE MOUNTAIN
Wilderness of the Southern Rocky
Mountain Range
September 1849
His sunken face windburned and
forested by an icicle-encrusted mustache and beard, Seamus Hanley
exhaled a steamy billow through his cracked lips into the frosty
mountain air. Then the Irishman held his breath and lowered his
rusted Brown Bess musket, his hands numbed by the frigidness
breaching his torn and frayed bearskin gauntlets.
The pain of hunger in his stomach
had long subsided, and now only the trembling of his grip and
weariness of his soul impressed upon him the urgency of this
unpleasant task.
He closed one of his lake-blue eyes,
the last remnant of the promise of his youth, and sighted the muzzle
of the weapon at the unsuspecting, rummaging elk.
Even at a distance, the ribs of the
great beast showed through its patchy and scarred chestnut fur.
Through the barrel’s eye, Seamus tracked the young bull as it
limped its way over to an aspen tree. The elk raised its head,
crowned in mockery by horns uneven and fractured.
Did it catch his scent?
Then the animal relaxed, bared its
teeth, and tugged on a low-lying branch, releasing a powdery mist of
fresh snowfall and uncovering autumnal leaves of maroon, amber, and
burnt orange. Brilliant watercolor splashes on a white canvas.
In the deadly stillness of a finger
poised on a trigger, Seamus shared a kinship of loneliness and
futility with his prey, whose ear flapped and jaw bulged as it
chewed.
This wasn’t the way it should be.
For both were trailing the herd at this time of season.
This was when both mountain men and
wildlife should be well fattened by summer’s gracious hands. For
the fall offered only last provisions, the final stones in the
fortress. Because, like shadows in the distant horizon, the bitter
enemies of winter were approaching.
Seamus tried to steady his focus as
the wind shrilled. “It’s me or you, my friend.”
The frizzen was closed, the powder
set, and his very last musket ball was loaded. This would be his only
shot.
For it had been another
disappointing trade season amidst the dwindling market of beaver,
otter, and marmot pelts. The fashion shifts in faraway places like
New York and Europe were flushing out trappers like Seamus throughout
the Western out-lands of this sprouting nation.
But he expected as much. Seamus’s
past was rife with disappointing harvests.
With a pang of regret, his numb
finger squeezed ever so gently and spark and flame breached the
touchhole, igniting the gunpowder and sending a lead ball, laced with
hope and desperation, through the icy air. Sounds, though dampened
by the snow, ricocheted through the woods.
The creature leapt into the air,
thighs and legs flailing in a moment of frenzy. Then it gathered
itself, turned, and bobbed its white tail up through the embankment
into the sheltering embrace of the frozen forest.
A flash here. A speck of brown
again. Then it was gone.
And Seamus was alone. Completely
alone.
Seamus lumbered over to a tree stump
mushroomed by snow, and with the back of his glove he gave it a firm
sweep to dust it clean before sitting down on the iced, jagged
surface.
“Arrgh!” He flung his musket in
the air, watching it spiral before being enveloped into a bank of
snow. Then he lowered his face into his moist, fur-covered hands and
sobbed.
No one would see him cry. No one
ever did. Here, in the high country, emotions were shielded by
solitude.
Though just two years had passed, it
seemed forever ago when he chose self-exile. When he tried to hide
from the memories.
Seamus could barely recall the
laughter of his youth and his passion for whimsy. Growing up in the
green-rich fields of Ireland, he would feast off the sparkle of cheer
that echoed through the farmlands of his people back home.
But that was many tragedies ago. Now
that all looked like someone else’s life.
He dwelled in the blackness of
despair for a while, but eventually the chilling lashes of the winds
pried him from the depths of his misery. Survival still lorded over
the emptiness.
Seamus retrieved his musket from its
snowy grave. It was useless without ammunition, but he couldn’t
part with one of his only friends.
With slumping shoulders, he headed
home. Home. His misshapen cabin in the hollow of the woods. Despite
his best efforts to acclimate to the wilderness, he was still merely
trespassing. And where was home when your spirit wandered?
Yet there was a more pressing
question. Would he even make it back to the cabin? The moment the
hobbled elk escaped, it became Seamus who was hunted. He had risked
the chase and strayed far. Now his hunger grew fangs and eyed its
prey.
The weariness. The throbbing of his
temples.
Every step mattered.
Seamus popped the top of his
canteen, lifted it, and poured water down his dry, aching throat.
Then he surveyed this unfamiliar terrain.
He rarely traversed this patch of
backcountry and for good reason. Civilization had encroached
following the opening of a United States Army outpost not far away.
It intersected with the Oregon Trail, the main pathway for travelers
to the West, who of late were drawn in droves to the resonating
whispers of gold in California.
The army fort was tasked to free the
flow of commerce from the growing hindrance of the Indian population.
Seamus had no quarrels with the brown-skinned natives of this
territory. In fact, he coveted their ability to thrive in this cruel
environment, which had buckled him to his knees.
But he was terrified of the American
soldiers.
At the thought, he reached up to the
scar on his left cheek, hidden beneath his scraggly facial hair. The
image haunted of that branding iron growing in size as it was
pressed down on him, the burning flesh
both his punishment and permanent mark as an Irish defector in Polk’s
war, the battle against the Mexicans.
He bristled at the word defector.
People confused it too easily with deserter. Seamus had fought
bravely in the war and never wavered amidst firestorms, death
screams, and the lead- filled chaos. Even when, like many of his
countrymen, he chose to change allegiances and fight for the other
side.
Suddenly, the whinnying of horses
pulled him out of his trance. Seamus bent down behind a bush and
strained his eyes high above in the direction of the repeating and
frantic neighing sounds.
Of course. Fools Pass.
It was daunting enough for wagons to
climb this section of the main trail during the warm and dry months.
But trying to scale it during wintertime only validated its name.
The horses sounded again, this time
blending with the curses of a man and the cracking of a whip. From
Seamus’s vantage point far below, he could see a wagon drawn by two
steeds straining to make it up the crest of the hill. Its driver
beseeched the creatures with a mad flailing of his arm whilst they
slid and grappled for traction.
The two great horses managed to find
a steadiness in their hoofing and the wagon straightened and lunged
forward with the wooden wheels digging into the deep snow. The
vehicle moved closer to the crest of the peak.
Then there was a hideous splintering
of wood. One of the horses reared and broke free from its bindings
causing the other to stumble. In the matter of a moment, the
still-yoked horse, the carriage, and its horrified teamster started
to slide back down the slope, angling toward the trail’s edge that
dropped hundreds of feet below.
Slowly. Excruciating to watch.
First one wheel cleared the edge.
Then another. And all was lost.
The driver leapt from his bench, but
much too late. The full momentum of the wagon and its cargo ripped
violently against the futile efforts of the horse to regain its
footing. The helpless creature was yanked through the air as if it
were weightless. Its neck flexed unnaturally backward.
Then launching downward, in one
flight of wagon, wooden shards, scattering luggage, and flapping
limbs of man and beast, the behemoth plunged in fury to depths below
amidst hideous songs of anguish rising above the wind’s mournful
cries.
Seamus shielded his eyes from the
horrific imagery. But his ears weren’t spared the tortuous
screeching. He loathed to hear the conclusion of violence, the
anticipated clash of rock and timber, metal and flesh.
Instead, there was a muffled thud.
Was it possible they survived?
Energy surged through his flesh and
he dropped his musket and ran with abandon, boots sinking through
fresh powder and legs tripping over fallen pine boughs and sunken
boulders.
After bloodying his face and arms
through dashes between patches of trees, he arrived with his lungs
ablaze at the scene of the carriage accident.
The collision with the ground had
been softened by a deep snowdrift, and as a result, the wreckage was
relatively intact. But the driver hadn’t survived the fall. His
body was bent grotesquely in a rose-colored embankment.
There too lay the horse, still
trained to the wagon. Amazingly, the poor creature still showed signs
of life, though it was reduced to a dim wheezing, and tiny flumes
rose in the coolness from the flutter of its bleeding nostrils.
Seamus curled up beside the fallen
beast and stroked its head. “Shhh . . . dear fellow.” He sat
beside it in an honoring silence until the last flicker extinguished
in its eyes.
He then pushed to his feet and
walked over to the mangled body of the driver dressed in a soldier’s
uniform and young enough to still be in the daily prayers of a
heartbroken mother.
As he looked upon the dead boy, he
was struck by the emptiness of the wide-open orbs gazing into the
murky skies. Seamus’s thoughts jarred to crimson-drenched fields,
haunting memories of explosions, the flashing lights, the whirring of
can- non shot hurled through the air against crumbling stone walls,
battle equipment, flesh and bones.
How could he had ever fired at
another human being? Back then they were faceless uniforms, just
flags flapping in the winds of war. Yet this soldier lying below him
could have been his brother. Maybe even the brother he lost.
Oh! Why bring back those haunting
visions of his youth? Would they ever go away? Would he torment
himself in even crueler ways than did his father?
Seamus looked around for anything
that could serve as a shovel, and the best he could find was a wooden
panel he ripped off of the carriage. He used it to drag snow over the
body. It was a crude burial at best, but it would at least keep the
corpse from being dragged away by scavenging predators for a day or
so before the weather warmed again.
Perhaps he just couldn’t bear to
see the boy’s face any longer.
He then explored the wagon, which
had landed on its side and was twisted and embedded deep in the
snowbank. Seamus reached down and pulled on the door, which tore from
its bro- ken hinges, and he tossed it out of his way. He climbed down
inside, discovered several canvas sacks, and threw them up and out of
the carriage’s womb.
Getting out was a much more
difficult proposition. Whatever parts of the cabin he tried to pull
himself up with shattered to the touch, and the walls of snow around
him threatened to col- lapse. He feared being crushed and
suffocating.
After much exertion he managed to
claw his way out, and when he was back on his feet, his muscles
writhed and his breathing wheezed. Dizziness swept over him and he
had to close his eyes to regain his balance.
There would be little time now. His
stomach clenched. He must return home.
Could there be food?
He propped up the first of the bags
and hesitated for a moment before unfastening the slender rope
binding it shut.
Was this right to do? Wouldn’t
this make him a robber of graves?
Ridiculous! He was starving.
He removed his leather gauntlets and
worked the knot with determination. Then it was freed and when he
opened the mouth of the bag his spirit sank.
Mail.
Then the next bag. It was the same.
Another. Uniforms. He flung the sack
down, and the clothing scattered, blue against the white.
The heavy bag? Please. If there is a
God above, then have mercy on me.
Cans! But there would be no way to
open them out here.
He untied the last bag, which proved
to be the most stubborn. Finally it was freed and, once again, it was
mail. But this one also had parcel boxes. He reached in to pull one
out and several letters scattered in the wind.
Seamus stared at the box and shook
it. Looking up, he saw the sun dipping below the crowns of the trees.
He couldn’t squander any more daylight.
He returned the package in the sack
and gathered the letters from the ground. As he did, one letter
caught his eye. In addition to an address on it was written PLEASE
OPEN IMMEDIATELY. He stared at it for a moment and went to fling it
but paused and examined it again.
Not understanding why he was
compelled to do so, he tucked the envelope in an inner pocket of his
doeskin jacket. Then he lifted the bag of canned goods and slung it
over his shoulder. Too heavy. He would have to do something.
Yet he couldn’t fully embrace the
thought of throwing away some of its contents. How much would he
regret leaving any of these cans behind? The indecision was amplified
by the pounding of his head and a surge of nausea.
Something drew him out of this. A
movement in the trees behind him, a rustling of leaves.
He spun, now alert, and gazed
through foliage beginning to be shrouded by dusk.
Silence. Even the wind had stilled.
Only his breathing remained.
Then. It happened again. The
snapping of branches.
Something or someone was
approaching.
I led them with cords of kindness, with the bands of love, and I became to them as one who eases the yoke of their jaws, and I bent down to them and fed them.
Bonus: Remember all of their words come from Anita Higman! 
