The Tree in Thunder Hollow

By Dan Barnwell

In this final section of the journey for The Owls of Thunder Hollow, the great golden eagle, Brownie returns to lead the owls home. Carrying Talons feather and a hopeful heart, Beech, the owl known as The True Believer prepares the sickly remnants of the owl community for the trip.

The young owls take a solemn vow to never return to the Weasel Swamp. Their spirits yearn for the high, dark ridges of Thunder Hollow. The young owls train all through the winter, gaining strength and discipline. Beech thinks they are ready by the time Brownie returns, but none of the owls understands how far and dangerous the flight home will be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Nov 2, 2006
• ISBN: 9781467848701

Dan Barnwell

            Born the eighth child in a family of twelve children, Dan Barnwell is a native son of Jacksonville, Alabama. His father died when he was seven years old, leaving his mother with ten boys and two girls. Although they had a small farm, the family struggled for years to survive together.             The Barnwell home, however, was full of happiness and hope. Every child believed a better day was coming, because their mother, Alice Barnwell, made them believe. Dan was a dependable source of stories and poems for his brothers and sisters. Each tale carried a positive message. “Keep trying. You will find greatness soon.”             Dan still lives in Jacksonville on a section of the property where he was raised. He has written many church plays and gospel songs, as well as some wonderful short stories.             In his first book, “The Owls of Thunder Hollow”, he escorted his readers through the childhood of a misfit who finally found his talent and became great. The birds in that story became personal friends of the readers. In this book, Dan uses his amazing storytelling talent to create a family around the reader. This is not an emotional roller-coaster. A person knows that there is no pain at the end of a roller-coaster ride. Not so, this ride. Dan has exposed the pain of love, faithfulness, honesty, and loneliness. He has also created a very real adventure full of great struggle and amazing accomplishment. Dan doesn’t tell this story. He grabs the readers by their minds and jerks them into the middle of it.

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This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.

© 2006 Dan Barnwell. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 10/30/2006

ISBN: 1-4259-6742-6 (sc)

ISBN: 1-4678-4870-1 (ebk)

CONTENTS

FOREWORD

CHAPTER ONE –

A TIRED OLD EAGLE

CHAPTER TWO –

AN OWL AND A FEATHER

CHAPTER THREE –

BEECH IN THE

TREE OF HOPE

CHAPTER FOUR –

A SAD REPORT

CHAPTER FIVE –

THE TASTE OF WATER

CHAPTER SIX –

NEW NAMES

CHAPTER SEVEN –

A MID-WINTER MEETING

CHAPTER EIGHT –

THE LAST TREE TO FALL

CHAPTER NINE –

A PLEASANT SNOW

CHAPTER TEN –

HARD TRAINING

CHAPTER ELEVEN –

A BELIEVER’S FAITH

CHAPTER TWELVE –

THE RETURN

TO WEASEL SWAMP

CHAPTER THIRTEEN – FIRST SIGHTING

CHAPTER FOURTEEN –

A SUDDEN DIVISION

CHAPTER FIFTEEN – OVER THE TOP

CHAPTER SIXTEEN –

AN OWL ALONE

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN –

NOISE AND TROUBLE

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN –

A LUCKY LANDING

CHAPTER NINETEEN –

A SILENT PRESENCE

CHAPTER TWENTY –

A FINE SPRING MORNING

CHAPTER TWENTY ONE –

THE YOUNG

A FEW FINAL THOUGHTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

FOREWORD

The Owls of Thunder Hollow have lost their home because of a terrible forest fire. Brownie, the great guardian eagle of the forest has been searching for the owls for years. Finally, just when Brownie is considering giving up the search for the owls, he meets one lone owl who is a descendant of The Owls of Thunder Hollow. The owl will soon bring news that Brownie will lead the owls home to Thunder Hollow next spring.

The descendants of The Owls of Thunder Hollow have been living miserably beside a swamp for several generations. There are no living owls to tell them how beautiful the mountains of their ancestral home are. If they are to return home, they must find the strength to begin a long trip based solely on hope. They will have to trust their lives to an old eagle who has spent much of his life searching for them.

After such a long time spent living beside the Weasel Swamp, the owls have become accustomed to filthy water and muddy food. To them, such conditions are normal. Will they have a desire to live a better life in Thunder Hollow, or will they fade away into the swamp, leaving the beautiful mountains silent and empty as the night finally falls over Rocky Knob?

Come along, children. This will be our final journey into the Forest of Life. We must cheer for the owls, that they will have the courage to leave a miserable place and return to their true home. The view from the swamp is not so bad because they have never seen the mountains. If they refuse to leave the swamp, the eagle’s life will have been wasted and The Owls of Thunder Hollow will be doomed. If they find their way home, we shall finally leave the Forest of Life with joyful sounds of hooting owls and screaming eagles in our ears. There is no greater joy than being able to return to your home after a catastrophe has made you a traveler with no good place to settle. Let us return to the Weasel Swamp to rejoin the owls, hopefully for one last wonderful adventure. How powerful do you think the word believe can be?

CHAPTER ONE –

A TIRED OLD EAGLE

Brownie began his annual flight to the warm lands south of the Forest of Life. His heart was full of joy. He had finally found his friends, the owls. The long, lonely search was successful at last. The years of living without hearing their familiar calls would soon be over.

Brownie also realized that his time as the master of the high windy sky would be over very soon. As Brownie followed the migrational path along Little River, he considered the course of his life. As the river found its way by following the slope of the land, it turned and twisted, ever searching for a way to refill the ocean to the south. Brownie realized that he had followed a path of his own. He had begun his life in a struggle to find that good part of himself that the owls would accept and understand.

When he had returned to Thunder Hollow after his first migration, he had rescued the owls from the angry bobcat. The friendship and kinship between Brownie and the owls had been renewed. Brownie had served as the summer guardian of the Forest of Life for many years, but the fire had come when Brownie was away. He knew that he couldn’t have stopped the fire anyway.

The years spent searching for the owls had almost killed Brownie. The flying wasn’t difficult. Flying is as easy as breathing to an eagle. Hunger wasn’t the problem. Actually, there was more and better food after the great fire. It was the silence, the loneliness that was wearing Brownie down.

Brownie, by nature, was a servant, a protector, an order-keeper. The loss of the owls had left him with no one to serve. If Brownie could have heard a friendly voice every morning as the sun was rising, he may have lived many more years, but the silence had worn away the great eagle’s strength. Year after year,