At 8 am, Molly was up crying at the basement door for breakfast. A week ago, she was on death's doorstep. Her eye is black, so we believe she had another bleed, probably from a blood pressure spike from her failing kidneys. The event was much like the one in December although she bounced back much faster then. We made train reservations to visit our sons thinking she would be gone by then, but she has more than once astounded us with her resilience.
After our jam-packed week, we spent much of yesterday reading quietly in our chairs set by the fire. My newest book was The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey. Set in Alaska in the 1920s, the story was based on an ancient Russian folk tale of an old couple who yearned for a child, built a little girl of snow and she came to life. In this novel, a young girl befriends an older couple in a remote area of Alaska and their encounters are so ethereal and fleeting that they at first wonder if she is real. Their relationship continues for several years with the girl arriving with the first snow fall and then disappearing during spring and summer. She is truly alive, but is a feral child who lost her mountain man father and continues to live and sustain herself alone in the mountains. I won't give away any more of the story. The elegant and lilting prose along with the sense of magical mystery made the novel totally engaging. I finished it in two days.
The new tally for Quest 2017 is 69! It turned out that all six students from Silver Creek whose parents attended meetings finally enrolled. The equipment seminar on Saturday was very successful. We were very grateful that three student leaders showed up to help. They took attendance, monitored the free equipment table, packed up gear, and hauled it out to the car. Quite a number adults attended also. I was especially proud of Brigitte who is ready to take over the tent, sleeping bag and backpack station. She's been interning for several years and has learned much of the operation. Same thing with Jake. Always dependable, eager to learn and assist, thoughtful and with good judgement, these young adults are the future.
Today, my plan is to revisit every chapter to check for the use of clorox or bleach bottles in the text of the book. I think I'll have to make a reference to the change early in the book and then clarify the information in the equipment chapter. I hope to write a new query letter tomorrow for a different publisher and get that out sometime this week. Since I did so much work on the first one, I should be able to adapt much of the pitch for the next publisher. Winter is nearly over and the pressures of the new expedition are keeping me from my primary goal: get the book published!
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