In October my husband and I sold our Portland home and moved to "the City that Friendliness Built," which also happens
to be the location for my work-in-progress (more on that in a moment). Pulling up roots after four decades is not something
I recommend for the faint of heart. The "serious cleaning/purging binge" I wrote about months ago, in my April newsletter,
was just the beginning of what became a tornado of filling boxes, disrupted schedules, paperwork, filling more boxes, packing
our life into a PODs and U-Haul (twice!), friendships forged under fire, and stress that shoved hard at the boundaries of bearable.
Did I mention the paperwork?
There's still much to do, and 2023 promises to start off with a bang, but we're deeply grateful for our new home, the friendship of neighbors,
and the pace of rural living. I can feel the roots beginning to take hold already, and it's a calming relief.
Once the moving dust settles, I hope to have progress to share on Becker's Trail, the historical western I've been working on.
What I can tell you so far: thirteen-year-old Levi and his ten-year-old sister, May, set out from the family farm in Lebanon to find
their father after their mother is injured in a wagon accident. The year is 1867, and Quartzville, where their father, Orin Becker,
said he was headed to find gold, is a booming mining town. When Levi and May arrive, they quickly discover they aren't the only ones looking
for Orin, and one man in particular isn't above using them as bait to get what he wants. If you're familiar with the young protagonists in
Come Snowfall
and Destination Stardust, you know Levi and May aren't going to tolerate such behavior!
No book cover yet, but here's the gold miner and his mule that I've had since Mom and Dad took my brother and me to Nevada as kids.
The prospecting duo have worked in the shade of my candelabra cactus a good many years now.
