Promised Valley Peace

By Ron Fritsch

Promised Valley Peace is the fourth and last novel in Ron Fritsch’s Promised Valley series. Blue Sky and Wandering Star and the other conspirators and their allies from the first three novels give up on the gods, whose existence many of them doubt, and discover how to use horses in warfare. They prepare to employ them in a last battle against the die-hards led by the brutal War Cloud. The purpose of the allies is to bring the prehistoric enemy hunters and farmers together as one people in a “new kingdom” and end warfare between them forever.

The US Review of Books: “This story ties up all the loose ends and leaves the reader with closure and satisfaction as they turn the last page, assuring devotees of this tale a pleasing ending. The friendship and affection between these youths is heartwarming, the sweeping action of the battles and combat is breathtaking, and the pacing is rapid-fire and wastes none of the readers’ time. While perhaps being a little graphic for younger readers, teenagers and adults will be swept away by the details that bring this saga to life and to its close.”

Kirkus Indie Reviews: “The novel convincingly depicts a society in which homosexual relationships are conducted openly with no lessening of public esteem, and Fritsch handles the theme with a no-fuss skill reminiscent of Mary Renault’s. Blue Sky, Wandering Star, and their various allies and enemies also contend with the introduction of horses as beasts of war in the valley’s latest conflagration. Fritsch tells a very detailed, very human story. Some of the book’s younger characters admirably seek to forge a real, lasting peace in their lifetimes, and the interminable threat of war allows Fritsch to make the conflict an allegory for every human conflict to come. There’s a sad moment of irony when a character late in the book hopes that their peoples will ‘never go to war again.’ A wise, bittersweet conclusion to a sprawling tale of prehistoric war and peace.”

Reader Views: “While this story is set at the end of prehistoric times, it made me reflect on how we share many of the same issues even today. For the people of this valley, they had horses to go to war, in our modern times we have weapons of mass destruction. Yet we share a common issue of having to deal with people that are greedy and manipulative for their own gain. In the story and in real life, people from different backgrounds will go against each other because of perceived differences, yet at our core we all come from the same origin. I found Ron Fritsch’s Promised Valley Peace very thought-provoking and I enjoyed being able to return to see what was happening in the lives of these people. Even though they were created in the author’s mind, he writes in such a way that the land and the people are very real and the readers who have been following this series will be happy to see how it concludes.”

Feathered Quill Book Reviews: “Upon finishing Promised Valley Peace, my take away from this body of work is a strong sense of having experienced an incredibly interesting epic tale of “what if” had the beginnings of time played out as Mr. Fritsch had so adeptly written across the pages of his series. His signature style of writing several subplots, twists and turns in the early pages delivers an intrinsic feeling of being at the starting line of a champion race that is about to begin. Indeed, Mr. Fritsch has accomplished fantastic closure to his epic series in book four, Promised Valley Peace. Quill says: The answer to the question of peace is delivered and then some in Promised Valley Peace. Book four stays true to the author’s intent in that it is genuinely thought-provoking with an epic ending that complements this intriguing civilization of people.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ron Fritsch
• Release date: Nov 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311952158

Ron Fritsch

Ron Fritsch grew up on a farm in northern Illinois. He graduated from the University of Illinois and Harvard Law School. He lives in Chicago with his partner of many years, David Darling. Asymmetric Worlds has previously published six award-winning novels by Fritsch: Promised Valley Rebellion, Promised Valley War, Promised Valley Conspiracy, Promised Valley Peace, Elizabeth Daleiden on Trial and His Grandfather’s House.

Book preview

Promised

Valley

Peace

Ron Fritsch

Smashwords Edition

For Lee Ann, David, and my family

Copyright © 2013 Ron Fritsch

Front cover photograph © iStockphoto.com/Brett Charlton

For information address:

Asymmetric Worlds

1657 West Winona Street

Chicago, IL 60640-2707

http://www.promisedvalley.com

Table of Contents

Notes

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Character List

Notes

A character list appears at the end of this novel. Spoiler alert: some of the information in the character list gives away the plots of the first three Promised Valley novels—Promised Valley Rebellion, Promised Valley War, and Promised Valley Conspiracy. If you wish to read about the rebellion, war, conspiracy, and peace in the order of their occurrence, please don’t consult this list until you've enjoyed all the surprises and reversals in those books.

The "tellers referred to in the Promised Valley series of novels perform several functions. They remember and retell their ancestors’ stories. They preside at full-moon and change-of-season holidays, as well as at mating ceremonies and funerals. In place of the king, they hear and decide disputes among the people. They’re mostly persons who go with" members of their own gender.

The "valley people" are prehistoric farmers who live in a fertile river valley. They believe their gods long ago promised it to them in return for their good behavior and obedience.

The "hill people" are the hunters who roam the mostly barren hills beyond the mountains surrounding the valley. They believe the gods promised the valley—with its abundance of prey in its mountain-side forests, lake, and river—to them.

The "town people" are the valley people who live on a high river bluff and run the kingdom under the direction of the king, the chief warrior, and the first teller.

The river people live in a seacoast kingdom south of the valley and travel up and down the river on rafts to trade with the valley people.

Chapter 1

Your people have let me know, Blue Sky said, they’re pleased with their new first teller. Now our sister has informed me you’re going to give them something else to cheer about.

Wandering Star laughed. It’s too bad we can’t reveal who made the people’s joy come true.

Wandering Star became the hill people’s first teller two days after Blue Sky, the enemy hostage and farmer who was his lover, murdered the preceding first teller, Heaven’s Voice.

Blue Sky had acted secretly on behalf of what became known as Rose Leaf’s conspiracy. Rose Leaf, the hill people’s princess, was Wandering Star’s half-sister. Lightning Spear, the hill people’s king, was their father. But because Dancing Song, who gave birth to Wandering Star, wasn’t the king’s wife and their people’s queen, her son could never be a legitimate prince.

Rose Leaf had grown to adulthood among the farmers in their promised valley. She and Blue Sky believed they were sister and brother and would’ve laughed at anybody even hinting she was their enemy’s princess.

Nor did they know Blue Sky’s father, Green Field, and Tall Oak, then the prince who was first in line to the valley people’s kingship, had abducted her in her infancy. They did it when they escaped from captivity in the previous war with the hill people. Seeking revenge on her father, Lightning Spear, for what he’d done to them, they intended to kill her.

But when they realized they couldn’t end the life of an innocent child, even a hill child, they and their wives thereafter did everything they could to keep Rose Leaf’s identity a secret.

They feared their people, discovering who she was, would instantly, and legally, kill her.

Tall Oak became the king of the valley people when his father died in battle in that war.

Morning Sun, Tall Oak’s only surviving child, grew up as Rose Leaf and Blue Sky’s best friend. And when the prince came of age, he decided to ask Rose Leaf to give birth to their children and live with him for the rest of their lives.

The intensity of his desire to be her mate didn’t diminish even after he learned she was the hill people’s princess.

The farmers in the villages, having fallen in love with both of them for taking their side against Tall Oak’s corrupt officials in the valley people’s town, overwhelmingly agreed to the marriage.

Blue Sky suspected Rose Leaf’s and Morning Sun’s innocent physical beauty hadn’t hurt their cause.

Before the mating ceremony could take place, though, a hill man called Long Arm, commanding his brothers and cousins, cleverly abducted Rose Leaf and Morning Sun and took them to the hills, where Lightning Spear reigned.

The hill people decided Long Arm was a hero greater than any they’d heard about in their stories.

Lightning Spear named him his chief warrior and placed Rose Leaf and Morning Sun in his custody. The king’s purpose was to prevent their escape and return to the valley.

Long Arm and his family, though, quickly sympathized with their captives. It was obvious to them their princess and the farmers’ prince were hopelessly in love.

Rose Leaf and Morning Sun, in return, not wishing to cause any trouble for their kind and generous captors, made no attempt to escape.

But their abduction—Rose Leaf’s second—began the most recent war between the hill people and the valley people. In the first battle of that war, on the hill people’s plain, the valley people lost almost all their able-bodied men, including their king, Tall Oak.

The hill people gave up many more warriors than the valley people did that cloudless late-summer day. But when the battle ended, Lightning Spear still had what the valley people no longer possessed—an army.

The valley people, under the charge of Green Field, their reluctant regent, could only surrender their lower valley without a fight and retreat to their smaller but more defensible upper valley. There they held off Lightning Spear’s army, slaughtering a grievous number of his warriors without losing a single warrior or auxiliary of their own.

The valley people’s warriors were mostly the men who’d come of age that autumn.

Their auxiliaries were the women, children, and older men who chose to assist the warriors. They had more to do with winning their people’s defensive battles than the warriors did.

The auxiliaries rolled rocks, tree parts, and even whole trees down from the cliff-top above the upper gorge and over the ridge at sunset pass, maiming and trapping a significant number of hill warriors.

The valley warriors, swinging their spears, following the instructions Blue Sky yelled at them, only had to suffer through slashing the throats of hill warriors whose eyes begged them for mercy.

Lightning Spear offered a truce: the farmers could stay in the upper valley in exchange for a hostage—their regent Green Field’s son, Blue Sky.

The original conspirators—Rose Leaf, Morning Sun, Long Arm, and Wandering Star—were behind that proposal. And Blue Sky eagerly consented to it.

Additionally, in order to keep the peace, for the time being at least, Morning Sun had agreed to die in the execution Lightning Spear ordered only because Morning Sun was the valley people’s prince.

Before he died, though—in Blue Sky’s arms—Morning Sun fatally injured the hill people’s appointed executioner, Dark Storm, the older son of Thunder Hunter, the brutal chieftain of the hill people’s second-most-powerful tribe.

Morning Sun also killed Thunder Hunter and injured his younger son, War Cloud. Although he was as cruel as his father, War Cloud had fought bravely in the battles with the farmers.

True Hunter—the third hill warrior to attempt the execution, after his cousins Dark Storm and War Cloud had failed—finally carried out Lightning Spear’s pointless order to kill his farmer prisoner and his daughter’s lover.

Morning Sun’s death unquestionably left Rose Leaf the highest-ranking person in the leadership of the conspiracy, which now consisted of herself, Long Arm, Wandering Star, and Blue Sky.

The latter two conspirators had brought down upon their peoples immense suffering. The brothers did it in a dark mountain gully with what both of their peoples later called a kiss of treason.

Having admitted their giving in to selfish desires had resulted in horror well beyond what their peoples had seen before, they readily promised Rose Leaf they’d only do what she ordered them to do to further her and their cause.

One of the leaders of the conspiracy had to make a final decision on every significant issue that came before them.

Blue Sky and Wandering Star were only too happy their sister was the one to do it.

As was Long Arm, who had good reason to blame himself for starting a senseless war only the gods of death, destruction, and sorrow could’ve welcomed.

*****

Blue Sky had accomplished the killing of Heaven’s Voice by agreeing to an assignation with him in the woods at night. He strangled the man quickly and quietly, before anything disgusting—other than the murder he’d promised to commit—happened between them.

Blue Sky could do it and get away with it. His purpose as a hostage was to keep the peace between the two peoples after their most recent fighting, which ended on both sides with an appalling loss of warriors—and for too many of the survivors, extreme suffering and hardship.

If Lightning Spear executed Blue Sky, the valley people could resume the fighting. And the hill people’s king could imagine most of his warriors making no effort to resist.

They might prefer to be taken prisoner by the farmers in their upper-valley haven and given all the food, clothing, and shelter they needed. Their families could join them later as refugees. They could hunt in the valley people’s forests and fish in their lake, river, and brooks.

They might even become farmers themselves.

*****

After Lightning Spear figured out who killed Heaven’s Voice, he took great delight in the crime. He even privately complimented Blue Sky for what he’d done, knowing he couldn’t be punished for it.

Lightning Spear despised Heaven’s Voice and his retainers, who did whatever the king told them to do. Lightning Spear had bought their loyalty by ordering the hill people to pay them tribute—which lately wasn’t forthcoming.

When the king could still enforce his teller-tribute decree, the tellers had no need to hunt, fish, or gather edible plants. As a result, many of them became, too early in their lives, too soft and weak to fight in their people’s army.

But when, due to the recent warfare with the farmers, Lightning Spear could no longer enforce his teller-tribute edict, he realized it didn’t matter. Heaven’s Voice and his high tellers and their favorites had ceased to be of any use to him.

After Blue Sky killed Heaven’s Voice, Lightning Spear let Wandering Star abolish teller tribute, summarily dismiss the high tellers, and replace them with younger and abler tellers who despised teller tribute as much as the people and their new first teller did.

*****

When Thunder Hunter and Dark Storm died from the injuries Morning Sun had inflicted on them in his own execution, War Cloud became chieftain of their tribe, which occupied the entire eastern half of the lower valley the hill people had seized from the farmers.

The hill people had won the lower valley but only at a great price in the lives of all their warriors except Thunder Hunter’s. Lightning Spear had used the second-most-powerful chieftain’s warriors to force the warriors of the other tribes, Lightning Spear’s included, to continue the increasingly horrific fighting with the farmers, who were defending nothing less than their existence as a people.

The something else to cheer about Blue Sky referred to came when Wandering Star removed the highest-ranking teller in War Cloud’s tribe.

That high teller had long ago chosen to stay in the king’s encampment with the other high tellers and live off the people’s tribute. He seldom bothered to visit his own tribe, where all the tellers, despite Lightning Spear’s teller-tribute rule, continued to hunt, gather, and do whatever other useful work they were capable of.

Those tellers paid little or no attention to their absentee high teller’s orders.

Wandering Star replaced him with the young teller cousin of War Cloud who was in fact making the high teller’s decisions for their tribe: True Hunter.

Most of the hill people believed True Hunter was the one who’d strangled Heaven’s Voice during a tryst in a moonlit glade. And all but a few of the hill people were pleased he’d done it.

The few, the former high tellers, predictably and strenuously objected to the obvious affront to the memory of the kingdom’s recently deceased first teller, whose deal with Lightning Spear had enabled them and their acolytes to live off the people. They even stooped to accusations that Wandering Star had rewarded True Hunter for killing Heaven’s Voice.

They might as well have complained to the north wind in winter it was too cold.

Lightning Spear’s and the lesser chieftains’ tribes were glad to know Wandering Star was replacing all the high tellers Heaven’s Voice had appointed.

And in War Cloud’s tribe, the stories of True Hunter’s talking back to the high tellers and king during his trial for the murder of Heaven’s Voice had made him even more of a hero than he already was. He got away with his disrespectful, treasonous talk because, in the battles with the farmers, he hadn’t hung back in safety as just another of Thunder Hunter’s ruthless enforcers.

He’d chosen instead to fight in the hill warriors’ front line, killing an inordinate number of farmer warriors in the first battle, on the hill people’s plain. He’d fought bravely again but nevertheless survived the even deadlier—for the hill people—second and third battles, which the farmers so decisively won.

All the hill tribes applauded Wandering Star’s decision to name True Hunter, a warrior they greatly admired, the head of his tribe’s tellers—and thereby bring about the wedding of reality and legality.

But nothing endeared Wandering Star more to the hill people than his ending teller tribute. That good will extended to those working with him to bring it about.

*****

Wandering Star had devised a way for the conspirators and their allies to quickly communicate with the farmers in the upper valley. Several of the fleetest allies ran unseen in relays through the western forest.

The farmers informed Rose Leaf and Blue Sky, as well as the other leaders of the conspiracy among the hill people, that the pause in the war was serving them well.

The summer had given way to a frenzy of construction. The valley people realized they’d need far more granaries and storage pits than they already had. The farming families who’d fled the lower valley, together with the unanticipated hill refugees, had provided enough extra hands in the fields, orchards, and vineyards for their people to anticipate the most abundant harvest the upper valley had ever produced.

The farmers also required new barns to shelter the livestock in the coming winter. The herds were uniformly larger now due to the many cattle, sheep, and goats that hadn’t been slaughtered to feed the one-fifth of their people who’d died in the battle on the plain—all of them able-bodied men who’d eaten far more than one-fifth of the food the kingdom consumed.

Many Numbers, the teller Green Field had appointed the valley people’s chief warrior, had predicted that would happen.

Meanwhile, War Cloud’s men stationed below the gorge in an encampment whose purpose was to keep the farmers in the upper valley, had nothing to do but hunt and fish.

One recent full-moon day, Noon Breeze, a survivor of all the battles in the current war, and beloved by the valley people despite his sometimes thoughtless bravado and promiscuity, sought to give War Cloud’s people something more to do. He sneaked down to the encampment on his hands and knees, hidden in the wheat growing on its own from the spilled seeds of former years.

He got close enough for War Cloud’s warriors to hear his insults voiced in their language, almost all of them questioning their manhood.

He knew they’d have to interrupt their own full-moon festivities and chase him back to the gorge.

He also knew he’d easily outrun them, as a scampering rabbit would a lumbering bear.

The hill warriors couldn’t risk dropping their shields during the chase that day.

The apprentice tellers Noon Breeze lived with, as well as the cousins and half brothers of Early Harvest, the upper valley’s survivor-hero of the most recent warfare, stood at the edge of the cliff-top with arrows aimed at the hill warriors.

It was the least the archers could do to assist Noon Breeze. Drinking wine with him in a particularly boisterous revel, it was they who’d dared him to do what he’d done.

The regent Green Field and the chief warrior Many Numbers were irate.

The people, on the other hand, were delighted.

*****

One messenger brought the news that the boys and girls among the farmers who were coming of age had finished breaking all the previous year’s foals.

Early Harvest and his half brother Good Harvest had found out—as Rose Leaf, Morning Sun, and Blue Sky had—that young horses would often attempt to throw them off the first time they tried to ride them. They learned to hang on as best they could until the horses got tired of their useless bucking and gave up.

There’s something else, the messenger teller said, looking at Rose Leaf and Blue Sky.

He was making his report in Rose Leaf’s tent. Long Arm and Wandering Star were with them. The four persons to whom he was speaking could tell from the expression on his face they weren’t going to like what he had to say next.

Blue Sky had correctly assumed who among the valley people had shared the task of telling the queen, Rainbow Evening, about the hill people’s execution of her only child, Morning Sun.

The person leading the disclosure was Fair Judge, the valley people’s first woman first teller, thanks to Green Field. She’d long been Rainbow Evening’s special friend. After the death of Tall Oak in the battle on the plain and the exodus of the lower-valley inhabitants to the safety of the upper valley, Fair Judge and Rainbow Evening lived together in a house the people built for them.

Blue Sky’s mother, Gentle Brook, who was the queen’s cousin, and Green Field were also present. So were Many Numbers and Spring Rain, the boys Fair Judge had raised in the valley people’s orphanage to become, with her, the people’s favorite tellers and friends of the queen.

The five informants told Rainbow Evening something else: Rose Leaf was pregnant and would give birth to Morning Sun’s child in the spring.

After that, when none of Rainbow Evening’s five confidants could be at her side, they made certain some other responsible person was.

One day, though, she told them she felt certain she was well again, and they and all the people had more important things to do than keeping her company. They’d best serve the memories of Tall Oak and Morning Sun, she said, by preserving the kingdom. Maybe someday, she added, they’d all be fortunate enough to see her grandchild.

She took to walking about on her own, the messenger teller revealed.

She exchanged pleasantries with everybody she saw. She was still the queen, Green Field and Gentle Brook had insisted, and deserved to be treated as such.

During one of her wanderings, Rainbow Evening happened upon some hill people who’d just come over sunset pass and joined their relatives living with the valley people.

The relatives knew enough of the valley people’s language to communicate with Rainbow Evening. But they didn’t know who she was. They hadn’t previously seen her.

They told her the hill people had recently learned Rose Leaf was with child. It had begun to make its presence known beneath her blouse. The child would be Thunder Hunter’s grandchild, Dark Storm’s child, as well as War Cloud’s nephew or niece.

Rainbow Evening repeatedly asked them if that was true.

A witness, they assured her, had sworn to their king and their highest tellers it was so.

The messenger, glancing at Blue Sky as if he feared Lightning Spear’s farmer hostage might strike him, continued.

They told her, the messenger said, his voice breaking, who the witness was.

They made Rose Leaf go with a man she didn’t love? Rainbow Evening asked the hill people over and over. They forced the person raised as her brother to watch? They killed Morning Sun? They took away all I had left of my family?

As the messenger spoke, Long Arm turned away to keep the others from seeing his face.

When the hill people newly arrived in the upper valley and their relatives heard Rainbow Evening’s questions, they became alarmed, believing they’d happened upon a person who wasn’t supposed to be left to herself.

Fair Judge and Gentle Brook later assumed Rainbow Evening had decided the original five informants had, solely to protect her, made up the story about the child in Rose Leaf’s body being Morning Sun’s.

It was no surprise, she must’ve thought, they hadn’t told their people that news. They didn’t dare lie to the people. That’s how they kept them on their side.

They hadn’t told the people Rose Leaf was pregnant with any man’s child. They’d even asked Rainbow Evening to say nothing about it. They’d told her Blue Sky, Wandering Star, and Rose Leaf herself might die if she did. That’s how they did it. They lied to her but not to the people—all to make her believe she had some purpose left in her life.

The possibility that Rainbow Evening had it all backward, Fair Judge and Gentle Brook agreed, probably never entered her mind.

She walked into the river just above the upper gorge, where nobody could get her out in time to save her.

The apprentice tellers on guard in the gorge that day heard the screams from their comrades on the cliff-top and saw her floating underwater past them. They ran and caught her with their spears but not before they were some distance past the lower-valley entrance to the gorge.

War Cloud’s warriors saw what they were doing and, despite Noon Breeze’s recent provocation, let them carry the drowned woman back to the upper gorge without being chased.

*****

Your people buried her on the cliff-top, the messenger teller told Blue Sky. They said she and your mother took part in the battle at the gorge up there.

On the cliff-top, Blue Sky said, as if he were speaking in a dream. Rolling boulders and tree limbs to the edge. The younger people pushed them over. They had ropes wrapped around their waists and tied to standing trees to keep them from falling into the gorge. Without the boulders, limbs, horses, and auxiliaries, we would’ve lost the battle. Lightning Spear and Thunder Hunter would’ve killed us all.

That’s what they did? Rose Leaf asked. Gentle Brook and Rainbow Evening, too?

Rolled missiles to the edge, Blue Sky replied, frightening the messenger with his tears.

Blue Sky embraced the messenger.

Even our queen and our mothers, he said, even they were helping us kill your comrades. You were there. I saw you. They could’ve killed you just as well as they did the others.

Blue Sky was no longer surprised when people looked at him the way the messenger did in Rose Leaf’s tent.

What sort of human, Blue Sky asked, would ever want such a thing to happen?

*****

Rose Leaf asked Blue Sky and Wandering Star to stay with her in her tent after Long Arm and the messenger left.

We’re killing people, Blue Sky said. And not just people we intend to kill like Thunder Hunter, Dark Storm, and Heaven’s Voice. We didn’t wish to cause the deaths of the two apprentice tellers, Rainbow Evening, and the man who saved the lives of the hill boys. But we damned well know we’re doing things that’ll get people like them killed.

That seems to be the way of this world, Rose Leaf said, drily.

And we don’t dare stop doing those things, Wandering Star said. If we do, we’ll only guarantee we’ll be the next people killed—along with our friends and allies.

And we can also fail, Blue Sky said. In which case those people we killed will have died in vain. And we’ll be remembered as evil. Even if we’ve convinced ourselves we’re not.

My father’s right, Wandering Star said. Farmers are too gentle.

Too gentle? Blue Sky asked, grabbing the front of the shirt of the man he shared a tent with. I’m too gentle? How many more people do I have to kill to prove to you I’m not too gentle?

It could be a large number, Wandering Star replied, choosing not to resist the shaking Blue Sky gave him.

A large number more, Blue Sky spat, raising his free hand above his head, making a fist.

And you’ll have to do it, too, Wandering Star replied.

Blue Sky could make as many fists as he wanted. Wandering Star knew he wasn’t about to land a blow.

People say, Wandering Star continued, you’re the best warrior they’ve ever seen. Something happens in your mind. Everybody can see it. The messenger could see it. I could see it. I can see it now.

Blue Sky opened his fist and brought it down . He didn’t want to strike Wandering Star but the gods who lived in some glorious heaven above them.

Isn’t something supposed to happen in my mind? Blue Sky asked, his voice rising like the wind before a storm. "I’m killing

Reviews for Promised Valley Peace

[leighcunningham_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Rebellion, War and Conspiracy, and it all begins with disaffected youth who rise up against the king and his officials when a prince is not allowed to marry the daughter of a mere farmer. Into the boiling pot, you have the classes: farmers, city dwellers, royalty, bureaucracy and you might be mistaken for believing you are reading a dissertation on life today and the risks to society that simmer below the surface until a seemingly innocuous event brings about conflict that has no way to end ie until Peace.We are introduced to the prehistoric people of the fertile river valley and their enemies, the hill people in the first book in the Promised Valley series, Promised Valley Rebellion. While this story is filled with an incredible array of complex, interesting characters like Blue Sky, Early Harvest, Spring Rain, Fair Judge (all aptly named), the author has thoughtfully provided a character list to keep it all in check.As we progress through to Promised Valley War, the second book, we start to see society from an objective viewpoint and although thousands of years may have passed, not a lot has changed – the same structures, division, hierarchy, discrimination, angst yet in spite of it all, there is still some hope. The onslaught of war and the overwhelming threat to life and the beauty of the valley have an effect on the characters that Fritsch delivers with a deep knowing of our humanness. It’s all too real.If you were not already feeling that the story, setting, and characters are epic in every proportion, you certainly know this is true by the end of book three in the series, Promised Valley Conspiracy. Comparisons with Homer’s Iliad are fitting. Other than war mongers, no one believes war is anything other than devastating for everyone involved and its reach extends far beyond those at the forefront. We certainly get that in a heart-felt way from Conspiracy.I for one have always hoped, especially through Promised Valley Conspiracy, that the war would end and peace would once again return to the valley. It was difficult to see how this might happen, but still we hoped, we hoped for a promise of peace. Then Fritsch honored his readers with this satisfying conclusion, which was no easy feat – we were heavily invested in the people and their conflict, and we wanted to see the youths who started it all in Promised Valley Rebellion come into age, and be the ones to achieve what did seem impossible. Congratulations, Ron Fritsch on an epic, multi-award winning series and deservedly so. I’m only sorry that it had to end, but thank you for the incredible journey.