The Herb Gatherer's Disciple

By Barry Rachin

Seventeen year-old Laurel Evers is running off to a fictional village in rural Maine in search of an idyllic existence that hasn’t existed since the era of the horse and buggy. Life was more pastoral then. People fished and hunted. They grew their own potato crops and made throat lozenges from locally-grown spearmint boiled in metal cauldrons over the stove. Women braided floor mats from swamp-grown rushes, and even fashioned sandals from those very same pliable plants. The Civil War was a recent memory not some moldy, historical trivia and neighbors were more 'civil' or at least it seemed that way.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barry Rachin
• Release date: Apr 29, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458016553

Barry Rachin

About the AuthorBorn in Boston, Massachusetts, Barry Rachin spent several years stationed in Yokuska, Japan as a Navy medic caring for casualties during the Vietnam War. He has studied at the University of Jerusalem, lived on a kibbutz for a year and holds a degree in clinical counseling from Simmons College. A self-taught woodworker, he presently lives in Attleboro, Massachusetts with his wife and two daughters.

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The Herb Gatherer’s Disciple

by

Barry Rachin

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Barry Rachin on Smashwords

The Herb Gatherer’s Disciple

Copyright © 2018 by Barry Rachin

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These short stories represents a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Herb Gatherer's Disciple

I

Ruth Savage, the school psychologist, leaned back in her chair and studied the shrimpy girl with the lantern jaw and unruly mop of dark hair on the far side of the desk. Your grandmother died.

Laurel Evers dark eyes focused on the moss-colored tendrils of a spider plant which reached almost to the floor. The teen, whose lips were frozen in a muted smile, affected an outmoded, hippy look with baggy, mannish corduroys and a plaid, flannel shirt. She wasn't the easiest person to get along with.