The Long Dirt Road The canvas flap at the back of the transport truck rattled incessantly, throwing thin slivers of afternoon light across the wooden benches. It was September 12,...
The Smell of Roasted Chicken The brakes of the heavy transport truck shrieked to a halt, a sharp, metallic sound that seemed to slice through the damp November air of...
The Taste of Ginger on a Gray Morning The sky over rural Pennsylvania on February 19, 1945, was the color of a wet slate shingle. A bitter, damp cold seeped...
The Threshold of Winter The fog off Puget Sound always tasted of salt and wet pine, a damp chill that crept through the wool of the oversized American military fatigues...
The White Pills The iron spikes had been pounding inside Analisa Schroeder’s skull since the transport trucks crossed the Ohio state line days ago. Now, lying on a narrow canvas...
The West Texas wind did not blow; it scourged. It carried with it the fine, red grit of the Llano Estacado, a dust that found its way into the seams...
The Announcement The Colorado sun had not yet cleared the jagged peaks of the Front Range, but inside the barbed-wire perimeter of Camp Carson, the air was already crisp and...
The Arrival The wind that swept across the Kansas prairie in November 1944 carried no mercy. It howled over the flat, grey expanse, rattling the chain-link fences of the auxiliary...
The Fragrance of the Red Deer The latch of the mess hall door did not so much click as crack, a sharp, brittle sound that traveled easily through the sub-zero...
The sky over the Illinois countryside was the color of wet slate, heavy and low, bleeding into fields of dead corn stalks that stretched endlessly toward the horizon. It was...