Bridget's Story: Longshot, #0

By Keith R. Baker

A married Irish immigrant couple looks into the upcoming Civil War with trepidation. He wants a stable country for his family to grow up in; she wants her family together, alive...
Wars tear families apart, Civil Wars being the worst. Rob and Bridget look into their own hearts as US Civil War begins to engulf them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: K and L Products Press
• Release date: Apr 14, 2016
• ISBN: 9781530854349

Book preview

Bridget’s Story

A short story prequel to the Longshot series

Keith R. Baker

K and L Products Press

Ronan, Montana

Copyright © 2016 by Keith R Baker.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Keith R. Baker/ K and L Products Press

37086 Canyon Mill Road

Ronan, Montana 59864

www.KeithRBaker.com

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Ordering Information:

Quantity sales. Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the Special Sales Department at the address above.

Bridget’s Story/ Keith R. Baker -- 1st ed.

ISBN 978-1530854349

Bridget’s Story

Just before sunset, March 1861.  Under a leafless spreading oak tree overlooking a tiny farmstead at the edge of the town called Darien, Wisconsin.

Bridget recalled the visceral waves of despair that had swept over her as she had again read the list of those lost in the California mining accident claiming the lives of eleven miners.  Each time she had re-read that list had been with a genuine, yet false, hope that her husband’s name was not really on it.

  There it had been, though, ink on paper, along with the other ten men who would not be returning to their families. The newspaper article titled, Shocking Tragedy In California Gold Fields caught Bridget’s attention as soon as she saw it.  There were no details beyond a supporting structure collapsed during the freakish flood and that all eleven bodies were recovered downstream on the American River in California.  The brief article ended with an alphabetical listing, by surname, of those killed.

John Riley - Age 23 years - Illinois

had been the second name from the bottom on that terrible roll.

  Those memories evoked such strong, painful emotions in Bridget that she avoided visiting them.  Her life since then had been happy and full, so she especially could not allow the emotions to linger - that would bring the deep sadness that she’d been through a few times over the intervening years. Was it really more than ten years ago that John had died?  Had they really only had those few short months as newlyweds together before he was gone?  It was all true and real.  She could hardly imagine it so, but there it was.

  Life with Rob had been wonderful.  She loved him for all the things he was to her as husband, provider, and father to their children, even to the one that was not his own child.  Especially for that - his love and devotion to Catherine, her first-born whom he treated as though she were his as well.  Rob never brought the subject up, having accepted Catherine as his own even before she’d been born.

  Memory again bore her backward to the time either side of the newspaper report of John’s death. So many things had happened together in those months, it seemed as though life were rushing her headlong from one frightful moment to the next.

  Bridget had become Mrs. John Riley in the preceding summer, 1848, the