Book ONe of the Widow Walk saga
widow
walk
Gar LaSalle
widow
walk
Widow Walk is a work of historical fiction. Apart from some well-known actual people, events, and locales that are part of this narrative, all names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either a product of this author’s imagination or are, in all cases — are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events, locales, or to living persons is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-9978436-5-1
Published by Solipsis Publishing Seattle, WA
SolipsisPublishing.com
Copyright 2017, Solipsis Publishing
Editor: John DeDakis
Design: Maps and Widow Walk Medallion — Randy Mott (MottGraphics.com)
Cover Design: Neil Gonzalez (Greenleaf Book Group - (GreenleafBookgroup.com)
Interior Design: Alex Head (TheDraftLab.com)
Social Media and Marketing: Scott James
Web design: Archana Murthy and Scott James
Audio Book Production: Mike McAuliffe, Tom McGurk, Wendy Wills (Bad Animals.com); Narrator: John Aylward
Table of
Contents
Dedication
Dramatis Personae
Map One – The Homestead, Whidbey, Port Gamble, Port Townsend, Bellingham, Olympia
Map Two – A Land in Contention, Vancouver Island and Puget Sound
Map Three – The Haunt of the Northerners,Puget Sound, Vancouver Island and Northern
British Columbia
Prologue - Emmy
Chapter One - Emmy
Chapter Two - Isaac
Chapter Three - Emmy
Chapter Four - Anah
Chapter Five - Pickett and Ingalls
Chapter Six - Anah
Chapter Seven - Isaac
Chapter Eight - Emmy
Chapter Nine - Pickett
Chapter Ten - Emmy and Pickett
Chapter Eleven - Isaac
Chapter Twelve - Anah
Chapter Thirteen - Isaac
Chapter Fourteen - Anah
Chapter Fifteen - Isaac and Anah
Chapter Sixteen - Emmy
Chapter Seventeen - Jacob
Chapter Eighteen - Emmy
Chapter Nineteen - Emmy
Chapter Twenty - Joseph Edwards
Chapter Twenty-one - Emmy
Chapter Twenty-two - Jacob
Chapter Twenty-three - Sarah
Chapter Twenty-four - Emmy and Pickett
Chapter Twenty-five - Emmy
Chapter Twenty-six - MaNuitu ’sta
Chapter Twenty-seven - Napen ‘tjo
Chapter Twenty-eight - Anah
Chapter Twenty-nine - Anah and Jacob
Chapter Thirty - Emmy
Chapter Thirty-one - Marano Levi
Chapter Thirty-two - Emmy, Sarah and Ursa
Chapter Thirty-three - Sarah
Chapter Thirty-four - Marté, Cull and Emmy
Chapter Thirty-five - Anah and Jacob
Chapter Thirty-six - Pickett
Chapter Thirty-seven - Ksi Amawal
Chapter Thirty-eight - Jojo, Anah and Ksi Amawaal
Chapter Thirty-nine - Jojo
Chapter Forty - Emmy and Anah
Chapter Forty-one - Sarah
Chapter Forty-two - Pickett and Emmy
Chapter Forty-three - Emmy
Epilogue - Isaac, Anah
Author’s notes
Acknowledgments
Book Discussion Guide
About the Author
To the Epiphany Bringers
Dramatis Personae
On Whidbey Island (in Puget Sound,
U.S. Territory):
Emmy O’Malley Evers - Wife of Isaac Evers
Colonel Isaac Neff Evers - Prominent Pacific Northwest Settler and regional judge and tax collector
Sarah Evers - 10 year-old daughter of Emmy and stepdaughter of Isaac
Jacob Evers - 6 year-old son of Emmy and Isaac
Winfield and Corrine Evers - Isaac’s younger brother and sister
Ben and Missy Crockett - Neighbors
Tom and Rebah Iserson, Major Roberta and Thomasina Anderson - Visiting guests
Dr. Joseph Edwards - Prominent Whidbey Island physician
Sam - Salish native guide and employee of Isaac
Jim Thomas and Princess Susan - Salish natives,
Whidbey locals
In North Puget Sound, (U.S. Territory):
Captain George Edward Pickett - U.S. Army commander stationed in Bellingham
Lt. Colonel Rufus Ingalls - Quartermaster General of Oregon Territory, close friend of Pickett
In North Puget Sound, (U.S. Territory):
Anah Nawitka Haloshem (a.k.a. “Black Wind”) - Haida tyee of Raven Clan (Queen Charlotte Islands)
Little Raven - Anah’s father, aging Raven clan leader
Klixuitan - Shaman of Raven Clan
Vladimir Varienko - Captain of the Pietrevos,
a Russian cargo ship
René Marté - French-Indian (Metís) Trader and smuggler
Eban Cull - Marté’s companion smuggler
Antoine Bill - a Metís guide and interpreter employed by the Hudson’s Bay Company
MaNuitu’Sta (a.k.a. “Patient River”) - Bella Coola Nuxalk clan tyee, father of Pickett’s second wife
Na’Pen’Jo (a.k.a. “Jojo”) - MaNuitu’sta’s son,
Emmy Evers’ guide
Morning Mist - Pickett’s deceased second wife, daughter of Ma’Nuita’Sta
Marano Levi - Wandering unordained priest
Ksi Amawal - Tsimshian tribe grand tyee
Map One:The Homestead
Map Two: A Land in Contention
Map Three: The Haunt of
the Northerners
Prologue
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Emmy
When she and her husband staked their claim on this alluvial plain, they did not know it had been haunted for thousands of years, first by long-gone bottom feeders who had dwelled in the vast lake that had been scraped out by retreating, massive, growling sheets of glacier ice, and then later, when the water finally receded, also by the beasts and aborigines who had looked upon the deep rich soil as their own.
Emmy Evers found a small gray arrowhead in the first week she walked the square mile that was now theirs, hers and her husband Isaac’s, the rights to their stead conveyed on a thin piece of paper by other new settlers, ones with government-given titles. Her young children, less reverent of the land than she, would later uncover several more ancient hunting tools as they played and worked the farm. And each time she again fingered that first, sharp treasure-find, the arrowhead pried away from a clod of moist black soil, she wondered where the makers had gone…the ones who had first chipped tools like this out of flint…and why they had left the richness of this land.
And each time she felt the prick of its sharp edges, she wondered whether they really ever had left, for in the few years she owned her fertile prairie mile, she learned that spirits lingered. She sensed they walked her plowed fields on certain nights, the patterns of their visitations incomprehensible to her and other mere humans.
Seven years into her stay there, her family gave of its own, in a way she had long dreaded and forever mourned. The Northerners had visited. They were emissaries of the Dead.
Chapter One
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Emmy
He is away again. I fear the Northerners are about. I am concerned for him and for us.
— Emmy Evers’ Diary, October 1st, 1857
Dawn, almost. So Emmy pushed herself up and out of bed. She wouldn’t pamper herself, nursing a cold. Too much to do every day now.
Her husband, Isaac, had departed in the darkness without saying goodbye. They had talked enough the evening before, she supposed. But she was alone again now with her children and her work. Alone again.
She pushed herself away from that thought, too.
Her
