He gazed soberly at the boy and girl, feeling a hundred years old. He could see now that he had misjudged them by firelight. Children indeed. Weary, footsore children, tending a love no more rooted than a new green slip. He saw, too, though, that there was hope in their eyes.
“They mate for life, you know,” he said, nodding to the rafters, toward the swallow’s nest.
He turned away, then, and headed for the milk room. Somewhere in there, way up high on a shelf, he had seen a gallon milk can with a handle and a lid.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to those of my friends and family who read drafts, offered criticism, and generally cheered me on. Would that I had pages enough here to name you all. Special thanks to Judy Lewis for early editing; to my gracious Goodreads friend Mimi, my first unbiased reader; and to Mary Michal White, whose stamina for reading drafts is nothing short of incredible, and whose ability to lift and encourage a flagging heart is one of the great undeserved blessings of my life. Thanks to Jon Sweeney and the staff at Paraclete Press who, while still turning my manuscript into a book with kindness, patience and skill, also got word of it out to readers, without whom a story is “only marks on a page.”
Although I’ve lived most of my life in rural areas and spent my formative years on a 365-acre farm, where our small herd of cows got milked twice a day by hand, childhood memories are too distant to supply the details needed for a story like Lights on the Mountain—credit for those goes to my father, Robert E. Taylor. (For errors, the credit is mine.) Many thanks to Billings and Associates, who sponsor the Descansa Percherons of Ash Grove, Missouri, for sharing their knowledge of working draft horses and allowing me to meet the horses at Jade Hills Farms and observe them up close. I’m grateful to Natalia Forni and Tatiana Tildus for advising me on the story’s Russian aspects, to Father Alexii Altschul of Holy Archangels Monastery in Weatherby, MO, and to Rev. Mother Magdalena of the Orthodox Monastery of the Transfiguration in Ellwood City, PA for advice on story details of a spiritual nature. (Again, all errors are mine.)
Heartfelt thanks to my brother, Robert D. Taylor, for his tireless efforts to turn a recluse writer into a public author. Thanks be to God for my father in Christ, V. Reverend Father Moses Berry, whose gift of undiscriminating love is rare in this world, to say the least, and gives me hope for heaven. Finally, thank you to my husband Kevin, and to my children Levi and Catherine, who as craftsmen and artists, and as people, inspire me to ask ever more of myself as a writer and as a person.
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