Was It Fate Or Destiny?

     Was It Fate…Or Destiny? © 2011 by Raymond Cook is a 256 page story about Emily Brown, a 24 year old widow and her two children, Tommy age 7 and Sarah 6 homesteading in the Crystal River Valley outside Marble, Colorado. Her husband Jess was a miner killed in a card room brawl at Kate's Place Saloon in 1890. Look through her eyes at the challenges she faces trying to raise and protect her children alone outside of town.      With Jess buried behind her cabin Emily doesn’t feel she can ever allow herself to fall in love with any other man. Travel back in time and see her meet Sam Bates, a kind but shy ranch hand bunking at the Triple R Ranch. See the struggle each of them endure trying to share their feelings for each other and her love she had for Jess before they allow their love to grow.      See through their eyes after they marry the strength it takes to survive the harsh Colorado Rocky mountain winters where one day it can be blue sky and the next, four feet of snow. Three years later Sam discovers a jar of gold coins hidden in an old apple tree he chops down and their new found wealth nearly gets Sam murdered by two men seeking work as ranch hands. Tommy ends up saving his families life’s from the killer’s.      Feel the terror in Emily’s heart as her family is terrorized by a grizzly bear. When Sam buys his children their own pony, he also buys Emily a horse for her birthday. After Sarah breaks her leg falling as she tried to put a baby owl back up into a barn rafter; Sam uses Sarah’s love for her new pony to help get to walk again. When the time comes for Marble to build their first schoolhouse, Sam, Emily, Sarah and Tommy ride to town as a family as Emily wonders if it was “Fate Or Destiny?” that brought Sam into her life the day they first met on the dusty road as she lay crying beside her buckboard wagon. This is my 1st of 14 western frontier books written since 2011.