Kindle Edition Download to your Nook (eBook) Humbles Church Road Media Category:  Historical Fiction Publisher: Humbles Church Road Media Type: Fiction Copyright: June 2012 They had prepared for the long winter; then he died. Would she be able to survive it alone?  Waking Storm's Winter is a work of literary historical fiction.  A widowed homesteader struggles to adapt emotionally and physically to the loss of her husband within a year of their arrival in Colorado.  With the onset of winter comes an enigmatic stranger, injured and alone, whom she reluctantly nurses back to health within her one-room cabin only to discover he poses a serious threat to the continued possession of her land. Excerpt She stood still now, in front of the window, and waited, waited for a feeling, any feeling.   Nothing.   Each day his touch grew weaker, distant, cold.  Maybe today was the day it disappeared, frozen into stillness by the falling snow...She waited, quiet, listening, longing.  Shaking the barren branches of the watchful tree above her, a sharp gust of icy wind provided the sole answer to her vow.  His voice was silent, his touch absent.  And in the fading light of the first day of December, under the chilling blanket of the first snow of winter, she shed her first tears of aloneness.

The psychology of survival
I assumed this book would fall into the "pioneer women" fiction category. It does, the main character is a young widow on a homestead in late 19th century Colorado. I expected paragraph after paragraph on the tedium of a homesteader's life. What I did not expect was suspense. It certainly did convey the hardship of early American life but with just enough hooks at the right times to keep me reading to the end. There's a story there.

The author also reveals the psychology of survival after a life-altering loss: The mind-speak that is part compulsion, part anger and part desparation to hold on to the dreams of the one who has died. The change from fall to winter is a not-so-subtle metaphor for the realization that life can be harsh and unmerciful. And, as is shown in the story, a single lapse can risk all that has been accomplished up to that point.

This is a first book in a series. I'm looking forward to the next.