Where Dreams Go-- and tough choices for writers

 Since I started with the Oregon trail and the Stevens family, I decided to carry on with all four books. I had planned at one time to add to the four with their grown kids. I might still do that, but there is another series, I wanted to add a book to, first. I have though some ideas for how I might carry on the history of Oregon through this family. After all, I am a native born Oregonian, not Indian, but it's a much beloved part of my family for those who are. I am getting distracted. Back to the book that followed Round the Bend.

 

First, I had to make a tough decision as a writer-- to kill off a character I had much liked from Book One. I had a reason for the needed removal. In book One, I had a secondary character (well, a couple of them) that I also liked. One seemed a natural to be a hero of his own book-- Adam O'Brian (even though he seemingly lost out when courting Amy Stevens. He was a scout, a  man who well understood the wilderness and the ability to fight when it was required. 

BUT, who would be his heroine. There were still those single sisters, but they didn't seem right, too easy and no challenge in the relationship. One was actually too young. I could bring in a new character; however I already knew who it should be, but it took something to happen that would make that possible.

Amos and Martha, the parents of Amy, Loraine, and Belle, had a happy marriage. In Oregon, they settled near where Amy and Matt built their cabin and there built their own. Happy, happy, happy. Amos was a good man, strong with a bit of a past of his own. Now though ,he and Martha, who had known each other since their own youth, were content. 

Amos though had to go if I was going to get the plot I wanted. I don't think it's ever easy to kill off a character that the writer likes. I knew just how to do it since that kind of accident had happened, in the community where our Oregon farm sets. 

Amos and Matt had been cutting down a tree, one that split wrong, injured Matt and ended Amos' life.

The book begins after that tragedy, with Martha adjusting to her widowhood, remembering over and over the moment that an injured Matt had come to tell her what happened. She had gotten to Amos as he was dying. He told her to tell... but died before he could finish the sentence. 

Because St. Louis Jones had also settled near the Stevens families, he was a help to Martha, but she was still a young enough woman to be strong and care for her own homestead, even as she grieved the loss of her beloved husband, but found joy where she could especially since Amy was pregnant.

I guess by now, readers likely figured out who Adam's love was. He had stayed away from the families, out of respect for them and especially Amos-- since the woman he dreamed of was married to  a good man, as Adam saw it. It was never Amy but always her mother. And, Amos knew it, respected Adam for his ethics.

Scouting for the military down in the Siskiyous, was when he got the letter telling him that Amos had been killed and Martha was now a widow. He headed north, knowing it might still be a long-shot, since he was ten years younger than her and had little to offer. Still, he had to give it a try, as he had dreamed of her over many a lonely campfire.

Their possible romance was complicated by their differences, her concern how her daughters will see him as her husband-- after all, at one time he had courted Amy. To add to it, Oregon had its own turbulent history. Some of it nothing to be proud of, many wanting it, to be forgotten.

Link is to Amazon to get the free sample, read the blurb, or buy there. It is, however, also wide. 

Where Dreams Go 

There is another link, this one to the trailer I created for the book--