The Jake Winters Series

The dispatch appears to be strictly routine: Pick up a load at a mine in Montana and deliver it to Reno, Nevada. But it doesn't take long before long-haul trucker Jake Winters realizes he's being sent to a ghost town to pick up a load at a mine that closed more than a hundred years ago. Little does he know that a mysterious pick up is the least of his worries. He is soon accused of a crime that has no logical explanation. In Doug White's first novel, The Load: An Over-the-Road Mystery, protagonist Jake Winters takes readers on an unforgettable ride as a cross-country truck driver who finds himself in unusual trouble. Against the beautiful backdrop of the U.S. West, White - who also happens to be an over-the-road trucker - crafts a baffling thriller about an unusual load that mysteriously disappears from a sealed trailer. We first meet Winters behind the wheel of his Freightliner as he is being pulled over by the Department of Transportation and the FBI. Initially he is simply curious about the situation, certain the authorities have no real business with him. But then he learns that his sealed trailer is empty, when it should have been holding a 4,000-lb. piece of mining equipment. And the chief suspect in the case of the missing crusher is none other than he! In the days before, Winters had taken a harrowing drive up a mountain road to J and J Mines in Slippery Gulch. He encounters several people in the old West town, including a small boy and the crusty owner of the mine. Winters chalks up an obvious lack of modern amenities to the isolated location of the town. But when the mine owner is mystified by the ballpoint pen Winters presents to sign the paperwork, even the easygoing trucker begins to question the situation.

Jake Winters is a cross-country truck driver. He drives 120,000 to 130,000 miles a year, and he drives alone. He likes it that way. He's single with no responsibilities, cares or worries except delivering his loads on time, and that's just the way he likes it. He has never had a passenger in his truck. He's fiercely independent and that's the way he plans to keep it. In the first of the family friendly Jake Winters series, The Load, Jake drives to the town of Slippery Gulch, Montana, to pick up machinery going to Reno, Nevada. AB a result, things are never the same for Jake again. It seems that Jake has been picked for a very special assignment, but it wasn't his company that picked him. It was an assignment from God. Although Jake considers himself to be a Christian and believes in God, he's a convenience Christian. He calls on God when he needs him then conveniently forgets him until the next time. Now God needs Jake. He's been called on to answer the prayer of a child. In Jake's first trip to Slippery Gulch, he meets Peter Stevenson. Peter is a charming little kid but severely neglected. On his second trip, Jake learns something far more troublesome: Peter has also been severely abused. After his mother's death, his abuse escalated to murder. It is learned that his father murdered Peter in 1901 at the age of six. Peter is a ghost. Yet, Jake is imposed upon to provide the childhood to Peter that he never had. Peter grew up lonely, fearful, friendless and loveless. Jake, a burned out schoolteacher, doesn't want anything to do with children, and now this. Why is he the one picked for this assignment? Is he up for the task? What if he fails? Does Jake have the patience to deal with a six-year-old? But not just any six-year-old. Peter died before the Wright brothers flew. His last words before death had been, "Please Lord, give me a friend." Can Jake be the answer to a little boy's prayer stated over one hundred years ago? If so, why? Then there is Peter. Although covered with dirt in rotting clothes and starving, he is cute. He is also polite, kind and thoughtful. Yet as a living child, he never knew friendship or love. Why? What was his life really like? And why was his final prayer answered? What is this kid? How can Jake become a loving, caring father figure? And how will Peter, a product of the nineteenth century, adjust to the computerized twenty-first century? Come along and discover Peter's past and their future together.

Late in Jake Winter’s trucking career, the cussedly independent bachelor is roped into raising a neglected and abused child, Peter Stevenson, a waif he met in Slippery Gulch, Montana. During his twenty-two years in the classroom, and as a camp counselor, he’d seen his share of neglected and abused children. But there was nothing in his past to prepare him for Peter. At the time they met, Jake recognized Peter as a neglected and shy child, but quite normal in all other ways. A week later, Jake was informed, Peter’s father had murdered the boy in 1901. Unbeknownst to his cultural shock in this, the 21st Century, and to Jake and his ways. Jake accepts the fact that his independence is being sacrificed for the care and nurture of Peter. He comes to cherish both Peter and his new responsibilities. Because of Jake’s love, Peter is overcoming the affects of abuse and developing into a normal little boy. Jake, his family and friends see Jake himself changing in good ways. Many questions pertaining to Peter’s life in Slippery Gulch have been answered. But many more questions have come up, such as: Who decided, and why, that Jake is the man for this assignment? How long is this crazy parenting thing going to last? What precisely explains Peter, anyway? Peter does little to satisfy Jake’s baffled mind and in new ways compounds his bewilderment. Come autumn, Peter’s challenges don’t let up. He spends a week in an elementary public school. Then he experiences Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, which are all brand new to him. As for Jake, he begins to feel like the boy’s actual grandfather. In Topeka, Kansas the week before Christmas, Jake introduces Peter to a mall Santa. The three are the sole witnesses to Peter’s wish to remain with Jake forever. Suddenly inexplicable tingles play up and down Jake’s spine. Harder still to explain is an unsigned, handwritten Christmas note found Christmas morning where the snacks had been left for Santa the night before. Whoever wrote the note refers to Peter’s Christmas wish. Then there is the unexplainable gift...

Jake Winters and young Peter Stevenson had been together for six moths. Christmas morning 2001 was Peter’s first Christmas morning ever. While living in Slippery Gulch, Peter never heard of Christmas or Santa Claus. Once he learned who Santa was, Peter was certain Santa would never visit him, since he never had before. Christmas morning, Peter was shocked beyond belief when he found the Christmas tree surrounded by gifts. But Jake, Betty and Jerry (Jake’s sister and brother-in-law) were also shocked. Here was a letter to Peter where the snacks had been, written by none of the adults, and a special gift in his stocking that was not there the night before. The mysteries surrounding Peter continued, but the Christmas of 2001 was special for all. With Christmas over, as with all cross-country truckers, it was back on the road for Jake and Peter. Dead ahead lay June 30, 2002, the scheduled date of Peter’s new funeral. His first funeral in 1901, in the wicked mining town in Montana had been a mockery of a Christian burial. Now Jake would give Peter a worthy Christian funeral. A beautiful stone honoring Peter would be engraved, and his bones would be reinterred in a modern casket. But repeatedly Jake prayed that Peter would be allowed to remain with him. A week before the funeral, Peter himself became concerned. He worried what would happen to him at the time. Would he be allowed to remain with Jake, or would he be force to return to the grave? It was a question only the future would reveal.