All Together in One Place (65 page)

Authors: Jane Kirkpatrick

Tags: #Romance, #Erotica, #Fiction, #General, #Christian, #Religious, #Historical, #Western Stories, #Westerns, #Western, #Frontier and pioneer life, #Women pioneers

Along the trail to California, 1852

His arms outstretched, he called to her, his voice deep and far away. “Look up here then, at me. I'll catch you if you fall.” Suzanne found his gaze behind round lenses, the sun glinting off the wire frames.

Suzanne heard, wanted to believe, but she hesitated, watching her husband brace himself against the current as he stood in the middle of the stream. He'd rolled the legs of his butternut-colored pants up to his knees. Water splashed and stained his suspenders, two lines of cedar-red tracks across his bare chest. He looked…boyish, hair falling over one eye, a wide grin of encouragement given just for her. “Put your foot on that rock, there.” He pointed with his chin to a gun-gray stone smeared with moss of green.

“It looks…slick,” Suzanne said above the water's rushing. “I'll fall.” Something made no sense. Her husband wasn't here; she couldn't see him.

“It's not so bad out here in the middle,” he said. “Just look up. Keep your focus, just like the good photographer you are. You'll be fine.”

Focus.
Her mind drifted with the word that seized meaning from the Latin,
hearth
, the hub of home, the pivot point for family. “Keep your focus,” he'd said. That's what she must remember. Maybe then, she would truly learn to see.

Join the women of
All Together in One Place
as they discover the meaning of family and what truly makes the center of a home. Come with Suzanne and Mazy, Ruth and Elizabeth, Seth and Tipton, too. Even Zane Randolf and Charles, Tiptons petulant brother, are thrown into the turbulent times where gold rules and ruins those who lose their focus Mazy winds her way through betrayal while Ruth journeys deeper into the wilderness of spirit and what brings true gratitude to her life. Meet David Taylor, driver for the Hall and Crandall stage company, and cheer him on as his life intertwines with the All Together women and one lone Wintu woman named Spring. As they all converge on Shasta City, can they remain together? Or is life made up of joining and separating, of taking new risks in the wilderness of relationship and landscape, savoring the experience and then moving on? Find out and journey with these remarkable women as each seeks to quench their thirst for meaning—and discovers it in the promise of a spring.

All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from
the
King James Version
of the Bible Scripture quotations marked
(NIV) are taken from the
Holy Bible, New International Version®
NIV®
Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society Used by
permission of Zondervan Publishing House All rights reserved

The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance
to actual persons or events is coincidental

All rights reserved No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kirkpatrick, Jane, 1946-

All together in one place / by Jane Kirkpatrick — 1st ed

p cm — (Book one in The kinship and courage historical series)

eISBN: 978-0-307-55341-6

1 Frontier and pioneer life—West (U S)—Fiction 2 Women pioneers—West
(U S)—Fiction I Title

PS3561I712A79 2000
813′54—dc21

99-054725

v3.0

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