Landslide

Location: Landslide, Montana, a small railroad, logging community nestled in the heart of the Rocky Mountains. Season: Late spring. A cold, wet spring with a record winter snowfall. "Everlasting love has the patience of a saint" Steven Lange, a renowned railroad foreman wants a son. Not only to carry on the family name, but to keep the railroad legacy alive beyond three generations. To Steven's dismay, his loving wife Jackie endured two difficult pregnancies and is medically discouraged from having any more children. Over time Steven's bottled-up frustration boils to the surface: Excessive drinking, anger, resentment, and dark moods. Their marriage unravels. Then like a crack of summer lightning, an Amtrak train derails on Steven's watch in the mountains of Montana. All accusatory fingers point to Steven and a missing warning flag. No fatalities, but millions in damage. Steven gets suspended. Jackie needs a place to escape from the media, the railroad, and Steven. She whisks their two daughters to a cabin, owned by her best friend Tina, along the Missouri River. She's determined to untangle their lives, and save their derailing marriage. Steven is devastated. His world is spiraling out of control. He visits his father Abel, a retired hardnosed veteran railroader. Instead of comforting words he's mauled by his father's anger for tainting the Lange railroad legacy. Jackie finds her wilderness retreat filled with additional issues: Rough living conditions, a cabin fire, a grizzly bear attack, and her daughter's dismay over no cell phones, internet, and friends. She did meet a gentle man named Lane Foster. He is delightful like the angel cloud that follows him. He's her guardian angel. Steven finds out about their location and shows up before Jackie heads back home. She stays behind. Lane lends her a caring hand and kind ear. A day later Steven gets reinstated and is working the railroad line that runs through the snow-covered mountains when Jackie decides to head back home to fix things. Bad weather unleashes a massive avalanche, swallowing up the main highway and a section of the railroad tracks. Jackie's SUV is caught unaware. Steven dashes to the highway to warn traffic when his work truck is struck by another slide. He manages to break free from his icy confinement and searches for victims and a way out. Surprisingly, he finds Jackie's wrecked vehicle. She survives the initial devastation, but is now in a coma. Weeks pass when the medical staff, Steven, and the media learn that Jackie is pregnant. Steven is petrified. The medical staff is blindsided--a pregnant mother in an irreversible coma; the news travels fast. Lane arrives in town to assist Steven in charity drives and hope. Steven is grieving. He knows that his negligence put the woman he loves in this unpleasant quandary. How will he face the world without her caring, loving spirit, and the warmth of her touch? What if the baby survives and it's a boy? He'll be strong for his daughters, but guilt will destroy what's left of his heart--the heart that Jackie owns. He needs a miracle. Jackie's due date arrives. Her coma is unchanged. During her C-section a miraculous thing happens. She awakens from a simple cough. Whether that initial cough was a sign from God, Steven didn't know, but it certainly saved her life. Steven go his miracle. A week later a thankful Jackie rests on the sofa with Steven, her daughters, and their newborn son. The difficult road to a full recovery is before her, but Jackie is ready for the fresh, inspiring, loving, and grateful journey ahead. "Everlasting love has the patience of a saint."

"LANDSLIDE" is Bret Kamrud's debut novel. A Montana native writing out of Austin, Texas.