This Road We Traveled , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Jane Kirkpatrick

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199 pages

English

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Drama, Adventure, and Family Struggles Abound as Three Generations Head West on the Oregon TrailWhen Tabitha Brown's son makes the fateful decision to leave Missouri and strike out for Oregon, she refuses to be left behind. Despite her son's concerns, Tabitha hires her own wagon to join the party. Along with her reluctant daughter and her ever-hopeful granddaughter, the intrepid Tabitha has her misgivings. But family ties are stronger than fear.The trials they face along the way will severely test Tabitha's faith, courage, and ability to hope. With her family's survival on the line, she must make the ultimate sacrifice, plunging deeper into the wilderness to seek aid. What she couldn't know was how this frightening journey would impact how she understood her own life--and the greater part she had to play in history.With her signature attention to detail and epic style, New York Times bestselling author Jane Kirkpatrick invites readers to travel the deadly and enticing Oregon Trail. Based on actual events, This Road We Traveled will inspire the pioneer in all of us.

Sujets

Historical fiction

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	06 septembre 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781493405138
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	3 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0432€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 2016 by Jane Kirkpatrick
Published by Revell
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 49516-6287
www.revellbooks.com
Ebook edition created 2016
Ebook corrections 12.17.2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4934-0513-8
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Scripture used in this book, whether quoted or paraphrased by the characters, is taken from the King James Version of the Bible.
This book is a work of historical fiction based closely on real people and events. Details that cannot be historically verified are purely products of the author’s imagination.
“Dramatic and suspenseful, This Road We Traveled is an unforgettable story of hardship, survival, and the bonds of family, based on true events. Tabby’s indomitable spirit proves that women, as well as men, helped to tame the West.”
— Suzanne Woods Fisher , bestselling author of Anna’s Crossing
Praise for The Memory Weaver
“Storyteller Jane Kirkpatrick puts flesh and blood on the bones of history. In The Memory Weaver , she breathes life into the little-known tale of Eliza Spalding, daughter of the famed missionaries, who survives unspeakable horrors to become a woman of love and faith and strength. Set against an authentic nineteenth-century background, this is a superb story of a woman’s struggle to triumph over time and place. The Memory Weaver is a memorable book.”
— Sandra Dallas , New York Times bestselling author
Praise for A Light in the Wilderness
“Kirkpatrick gives marvelous insight into the struggle of the freed slave, the adventurous lure of the Oregon Trail with the numerous potentials it promised, and the tremendous amount of faith it took to endure.”
— CBA Retailers + Resources
“Kirkpatrick exercises her considerable gift for making history come alive.”
— Publishers Weekly
“This heart-stirring new historical novel has romance, mystery, and adventure. Characters are sweet, charming, strong, witty, and looking for their places in the world. One character is loosely based on the true story of the first African American woman to cross the Oregon Trail to live in freedom. Kirkpatrick has done her research and gives detailed descriptions without overwhelming the reader and the story.”
— RT Book Reviews
Dedicated to Jerry,
who walks many roads with me
No one knows and we would have to figure everything out ourselves.
Rinker Buck in The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey
Cast of Characters

Tabitha (Tabby) Moffat Brown: matriarch of Brown family
Clark Brown (deceased): Tabby’s husband
John Brown: Tabby’s brother-in-law and former sailor
Orus Brown & Lavina: oldest Brown son and his second wife; 13 children
Manthano Brown and Catherine: Tabby’s youngest son and second wife; Young Pherne and other children
Pherne & Virgil Pringle: Tabby’s only daughter and her husband
Virgilia: oldest Pringle daughter
Clark: oldest Pringle son
Octavius, Albro, Oliver (deceased): Pringle sons
Sarelia Lucia, Emma Pherne, Mary Ella: youngest Pringle daughters
*Judson Morrow: ox driver
Jesse Applegate: originator of Southern cutoff trail
Captain Levi Scott: pilot, guide for Applegate cutoff trail
**Nellie Louise Blodgett: traveler on the Oregon Trail
Fabritus Smith: Oregon farmer and legislator
Harvey & Emeline Clark: independent missionaries in Forest Grove
* imagined character representative of people of the time
** based on a real person from another century

Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Endorsement Page
Dedication
Cast of Characters
Prologue
Part One
1. Tabby’s Plan
2. Pherne’s Watch
3. Virgilia’s Hope
4. Orus’s Report
5. What He Didn’t Say
6. Considerations
7. The Reality of Things
8. Choices
9. Sorting
10. Divers Seasons, Divers Climes
11. Last Arguments
12. We Are Call’d
Part Two
13. To Choose
14. What Friends We Make
15. To Keep from Falling
16. Waiting on Guidance
17. A Fork in the Road
18. Moon in Morning Milk
19. The Form of Things Unknown
20. It Comes to This
21. Great Acts of Loving
22. Doing Good
23. Grief and Guilt
24. The Wisdom of Bones
Part Three
25. Orus Says
26. Tired of Choosing
27. Resting Place
28. The Hearth of Her Heart
29. Six and One-Quarter Cents
30. New Trails
31. Reconciled
32. The Varieties of Manna
33. Frontiers
34. As Vast as the Pacific
35. Feet or Wings
Author’s Notes and Acknowledgments
Resources
Author Interview
Reader Group
About the Author
Also by Jane Kirkpatrick
Back Ads
Back Cover
Prologue
N OVEMBER 1846
S OUTHERN O REGON T RAIL
It was a land of timber, challenge, and trepidation, forcing struggles beyond any she had known, and she’d known many in her sixty-six years. But Tabitha Moffat Brown decided at that moment with wind and snow as companions in this dread that she would not let the last entry in her memoir read “ Cold. Starving. Separated .” Instead she inhaled, patted her horse’s neck. The snow was as cold as a Vermont lake and threatening to cover them nearly as deep while she decided. She’d come this far, lived this long, surely this wasn’t the end God intended.
Get John back up on his horse. If she couldn’t, they’d both perish.
“John!”
The elderly man in his threadbare coat and faded vest sank to his knees. At least he hadn’t wandered off when he’d slid from his horse. His white hair lay wet and coiled at his neck beneath a rain-drenched hat. His shoulder bones stuck out like a scarecrow’s, sticks from lack of food and lost hope.
“You can’t stop, John. Not now. Not yet.” Wind whistled through the pines and her teeth chattered. “Captain!” She needed to sound harsh, but she nearly cried, his name stuck in the back of her throat. This good man, who these many months on the trail had become more than a brother-in-law, he had to live. He couldn’t die, not here, not now. “Captain! Get up. Save your ship.”
He looked up at her, eyes filled with recognition and resignation. “Go, Tabby. Save yourself.”
“Where would I go without you, John Brown? Fiddlesticks. You’re the captain. You can’t go down with your ship. I won’t allow it.”
“Ship?” His eyes took on a glaze. “But the barn is so warm. Can’t you smell the hay?”
Barn? Hay? Trees as high as heaven marked her view, shrubs thick and slowing as a nightmare clogged their path, and all she smelled was wet forest duff, starving horseflesh, and for the first time in her life that she could remember, fear.
Getting upset with him wouldn’t help. She wished she had her walking stick to poke at him. Her hands ached from cold despite her leather gloves. She could still feel the reins. That was good. What a pair they were: he, old and bent and hallucinating; she, old and lame and bordering on defeat. Her steadfast question, what do I control here , came upon her like an unspoken prayer. Love and do good . She must get him warm or he’d die.
With her skinny knees, she pushed her horse closer to where John slouched, all hope gone from him. Snow collected on his shoulders like moth-eaten epaulets. “John. Listen to me. Grab your cane. Pull yourself up. We’ll make camp. Over there, by that tree fall.” She pointed. “Come on now. Do it for the children. Do it for me.”
“Where are the children?” He stared up at her. “They’re here?”
She would have to slide off her horse and lead him to shelter herself. And if she failed, if her feet gave out, if she couldn’t bring him back from this tragic place with warmth and water and, yes, love, they’d both die and earn their wings in Oregon country. It was not what Tabitha Moffat Brown had in mind. And what she planned for, she could make happen. She always had . . . until now.

1
Tabby’s Plan
1845
S T . C HARLES , M ISSOURI
Tabitha Moffat Brown read the words aloud to Sarelia Lucia to see if she’d captured the rhythm and flow. “Feet or wings: well, feet, of course. As a practical matter we’re born with limbs, so they have a decided advantage over the wistfulness of wings. Oh, we’ll get our wings one day, but not on this earth, though I’ve met a few people who I often wondered about their spirit’s ability to rise higher than the rest of us in their goodness, your grandfather being one of those, dear Sarelia. Feet hold us up, help us see the world from a vantage point that keeps us from becoming self-centered—one of my many challenges, that self-centered portion. I guess the holding up too. I’ve had to use a cane or walking stick since I was a girl.”
“How did that happen, Gramo?” The nine-year-old child with the distinctive square jaw put the question to her.
“I’ll tell you about the occasion that brought that cane into my life and of the biggest challenges of my days . . . but not in this section. I know that walking stick is a part of my feet, it seems, evidence that I was not born with wings.” She winked at her granddaughter.
“When will you get to the good parts, where you tell of the greatest challenge of your life, Gramo? That’s what I want to hear.”
“I think this is a good start, don’t you?”
“Well . . .”
“Just you wait.”
Tabitha dipped her goose quill pen into the ink, then pierced the air with her weapon while she considered what to write next.
“Write the trouble stories down, Gramo. So I have them to read when I’m growed up.”
“When you’re grown up.”
“Yes, then. And I’ll write my stories for you.” A smile that lifted to her dark eyes followed. “I want to know when trouble found you and how you got out of it. That’ll help me when I get into trouble.”
“Will it? You won’t get into scrapes, will you?” Tabby grinned. “We’ll both sit and write for a bit.” The child agreed and followed her