![]() ![]() “Something” turns out to be transformative – “What if we weren’t two girls, but two young men, off to make our fortunes in the gold fields?” Annamae considers out loud. ![]() “If we’re going, we best get you something to wear,” Annamae announces as she evaluates Samantha’s bloodstained clothes. She also turns out to be Samantha’s first and only friend. The first witness to Samantha’s self-defensive deed is Annamae, who has plenty of secrets of her own – not the least of which is that she’s about to become a runaway slave. The law in Missouri in this year of our Lord 1849 does not sympathize with a Chinaman’s daughter.” But within hours, he’s dead: “Does killing a man who tried to rape me count as murder?” she asks. ![]() ![]() When a local businessman offers temporary help, she has no alternative but to accept his hospitality. Her beloved father was her only relative, unless she counts the violin that has been in the family for four generations. Not yet 16, Samantha is now utterly alone. In 1849, the death of a frontier town’s lone Chinaman gets little more than a headshake at best. When Samantha Young swoops out of her father’s dry goods store still angry from the news that they will soon be leaving Missouri for California – the exact opposite direction from New York – she couldn’t possibly have realized that her life would literally be reduced to ashes by the time she got back. ![]()
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