A Land of Sheltered Promise

Books soothe my soul.  This was such a book.  

Jane Kirkpatrick is an author that I read sporadically.  She lives in central Oregon, and her books reflect the history and geography of that area.  A Land of Sheltered Promise, published in 2005, is a novel based on true stories of Big Muddy Ranch in Wasco County, Oregon.

This book contains three separate stories, which the author has subtitled "Faith, Hope, and Charity".  The three stories span one hundred years from 1897 to 1997.

In Part One, Eva Bruner gets her first glimpse of the Big Muddy Ranch when she is four years old. Eva's youthful joy is short-lived. Her father kills a man and gets a life sentence, and her mother relinquishes hers to despair. Soon Eva finds herself being raised by her aunt and uncle. But her love for them and the Big Muddy grows.  She marries at age 15, once again, her joy is snatched away when her husband Dee is accused of murder and seems destined for the same fate as her father. Eva is determined, however, not to follow the steps of her mother and is blessed with an inner strength that carries her through betrayals and the ordeals of his trial. She sets up a homestead near the Big Muddy and continues to believe that her husband is innocent of his crime.

Part Two brings Cora Swenson to the Big Muddy Ranch. The year is now 1984 and the Muddy,along with the nearby town of Antelope, Oregon, has been taken over by the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and his followers, a cult designed by shrewd lawyers to bilk the rich and foolish out of enough money to support the Bhagwan, his 90 Rolls-Royces, and his team.  Ultimately, a scandal caused by cult members who engineered a bio-terrorist attack ends the Bhagwan's reign, but many of the Sannyasins stay on and await his return, a testimony to the thoroughness of his indoctrination. 

Part Three returns to the Big Muddy Ranch in 1997 after it has been abandoned by the last of the Sannyasins and is now part of a land parcel that the Washington family wants to donate to Young Life, a non-denominational youth organization that serves teens. The conversion of this rugged, untamed land into a camp for kids celebrates the redemption of this land.

This book of historical fiction was a great read!  I enjoyed parts 2 and 3 the most.  See the author's website (and blog), Weaving the Stories of Our Lives, for more information about her books.