The Kentucky Spring: Stories Told Along Old Bloomfield Road
RICHARD SHOUSE
This fictional novel is taken from Kentucky history and the stories people told along Old Bloomfield Road. Off the narrow country road, hidden in the woods, was a spring, a pool of water. A young Shawnee boy discovered the reflection from the spring water could reveal the future. He spilled his blood there as an old man as his secret was discovered.
Over time, many people looked into the spring. Most saw nothing. A few saw strange reflections; a landscape, an unfamiliar face, their true love, their family’s destiny, their own demise. The magic spring remained secret, concealed among the trees near a creek along the sweeping meadow as people continued to lived their hard, challenging lives.
As the land was contested for, the stories narrate a confrontation of brutality versus brutality. Fear and loneliness in the wilderness versus hope for a family’s future. Suicide and murder, the tragic tale reported all over the world known as ‘the Kentucky Tragedy.’
Some abandoned the farm and their family for a dream. The Civil War divided mother and son, and a father sacrificed his life for his only boy. There are the indigenous natives, frontiersmen, settlers, duelists, carpenters and farmers, slaves and aristocrats, Shakers and minstrel performers singing Stephen Foster. Moonshiners and thoroughbred horses. Eloping teens and Kentucky high school basketball. Joy and love, melancholy and despair.
And during these difficult times there remained eternal hope, another day, a child’s laughter, and the pleasure of a husband and wife holding hands. The fortunate few could see this in the waters of the Kentucky spring.
RELEASE DATE: September 18, 2024
GENRE: Historical Fiction
FORMAT: Paperback
ISBN-13: 9798988732778
TRIM: 6 in x 9 in
PAGE COUNT: 522
