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Christine Sunderland
eLectio Publishing
Category:
Literary Fiction
Publisher: eLectio Publishing
ISBN-10: 1632132842
Type: Fiction
Pages: 268
Copyright: 2016
ISBN-13: 9781632132840
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
Set at UC Berkeley, four characters struggle with today's threats to free speech, freedom of religion, rule of law, and the collapse of Western civilization as they seek peace, truth, transcendence, beauty, and faith.
UC Berkeley grad student Jessica Thierry walks the Fire Trail in the hills and witnesses a rapist-murderer leave the scene. Fearing for her life, she tries to focus on her doctorate about Christianity's role in Berkeley's history.
Grad student Zachary Aguilar, in love with Jessica, searches for goodness, beauty, transcendence, and truth as he tries to protect her from the killer.
Armenian Pastor Nathaniel Casparian, disfigured by burns, is resident caretaker of Comerford House Museum. He cares for his dying brother who is writing The Question of Civilization. Father Nate prays for religious freedom and for the return of faith in a loving God.
Anna Aguilar, Comerford's docent, vets violent novels donated to her children's library. Frightened by rising crime, she is encouraged by Nate's belief in the Judeo-Christian tradition in the public square.
Set against the collapse of Western civilization, The Fire Trail draws these four characters to an unforgettable conclusion.
Excerpt
One Jessica Jessica Thierry paused on the edge of the Fire Trail and gazed at San Francisco Bay spread before her. She had made the right decision, she thought, to walk alone this Wednesday afternoon, even though her roommate could not come. She fingered the lipstick-sized pepper spray in her pocket. She was nearly back at the trailhead and perfectly safe. She removed her glasses, wiped them carefully on her blouse, slipped them on, and looked out toward the wide water, the Golden Gate, the city, and the fog. She sighed, her shoulders relaxing. San Francisco lay like a bride awaiting her lover, the bank of mist caressing her northern shoulder, slipping slowly in and over her bay. Spanning the gateway, the bridge was disappearing beneath the fog that rolled toward Berkeley's hills. The sweet rounded crest of Marin's headland rose, aloof. Pale blue sky crowned the city and the fog and the land, anointing them. Jessica inhaled the moist air, filling her lungs, and once again was touched with awe. She exhaled. She was not winded, for she was a walker, not a runner, on this Berkeley trail that looped high into the forest of plane and pine, bay and eucalyptus, but she was thirsty. She pulled out a bottle of water, twisted the top, and sipped. Sitting down on the gravelly edge of the path, she wrapped her arms, protected by long sleeves, around her knees, her hands feeling the rough denim of her jeans. She leaned forward, studying the scene, drinking it in. The fog would lap these East Bay hills, fingering the shallow valleys, but the San Francisco skyline with its highs and lows might soon be buried, along with the bridge's rust-colored spires. Five o'clock was drawing near and ocean breezes were pushing the fog through the gate on schedule, this third day of September 2014. Jessica loved September in these hills. She had only recently discovered the Fire Trail. In all of her twenty-two years growing up
THE FIRE TRAIL
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in neighboring Oakland, she had never hiked it. It wasn't until she was a student at Cal that she explored the easy wide path that protected Berkeley from uncontrolled brush fires in the surrounding hills. The firebreak passed through dappled light and sudden shadow, under canopies of old limbs, offering leafy windows that opened to patches of blue, with vistas beckoning around corners. Hiking the trail soon became part of her routine, and then part of her, but always it was new, changed by time and season, old growth and new growth as the living replaced the dead.
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