Chapter 1 Blackwater Junction, Dakota Territory. Autumn 1879. The first snow of the season came early that year, which William Harker took as a personal insult. He’d been racing it since September — the fence line on the north pasture, the root cellar that needed another two feet of depth, the gap in the barn…
Chapter 1 Blackthorne Ridge, Frontier Territory. October 1882. The morning came in gray and cold, the kind of October cold that settled into the bones before a person even stepped off the porch. Miriam Hail was already awake when the light was still just a thin line at the edge of the sky. She dressed…
Chapter 1 Yuma, Arizona Territory. Summer 1883. The stage coach to Tucson left Yuma at half past six in the morning, and Martha Whitmore had been awake since four. She’d spent the pre-dawn hours in her small room at the Yuma boarding house, refolding the same three dresses, checking the same leather satchel for the…
Chapter 1 Black Hollow, Montana Territory. Spring 1880. The wagon rolled into Black Hollow on a Tuesday morning, which meant most of the town had nothing better to do than watch it arrive. A wide, flat-bedded thing pulled by two draft horses that looked like they had been on the road longer than they had…
Chapter 1 The Chicago Convention Center had the specific quality of a place that had learned to manage the expectations of many different kinds of people simultaneously. The lobby held school children with lanyards and parents in work clothes and exhibitors adjusting their signage and caterers navigating the gaps between all of them, and the…
Chapter 1 Ruth Okafor arrived at Crestwood Preparatory School at 11:43 for a 12:15 conference, which was how she always arrived at things — early enough to see them before they were arranged for her. The receptionist at the front desk told her the conference room was being set up and offered to take her…
Chapter 1 The headlights were at the wrong angle. June Adler noticed this from the window of the shop office, where she had been catching up on invoices at eleven-thirty on a Tuesday in February with a cup of cold coffee and the specific grim satisfaction of work that needed doing and was getting done….
Chapter 1 The boy came in at 1:23 in the morning, which was not unusual for the ER waiting room at Chicago Memorial. What was unusual was that he was alone, unhurt, and completely dry despite the rain outside, which meant he had come from somewhere inside the building rather than the street. Nadia Osei…
Chapter 1 Cash Valley, Utah Territory. July 1877. If my size offends you, sir, don’t taste my food. The knife hit the table hard enough to make the cups jump. Wood dust lifted into the July air, mixed with sweat, smoke, and the heavy smell of meat simmering too long under a hot Utah sun….
Chapter 1 Frost Creek, Wyoming Territory. December 1879. Caleb Thorne had come down from the Wind River Range six weeks before he intended to. He told himself it was because winter had arrived early. The snow had sealed the high passes before Thanksgiving, and a man alone above timberline with one mule, two rifles, a…
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