The Promise Seed: Saving Mother Earth

Jody, an award winning anthropologist and psychiatric nurse, brings her crisp writing style into a tense, entertaining novel of love, jealousy, life-threatening disasters, dishonest people, forgiveness, and a mystery only the grave can reveal. In 1909 following a dream of becoming rich, naive homesteaders from Iowa try to tame the treeless, riverless eastern Colorado prairie. Once the land belonged to brave Cheyenne Indians and millions of buffalo. In the Extended Homestead Act of 1909 it is given to homesteaders to settle. Living in a 12'X24' dugout with spiders and bugs challenges everyone. Summer is blistering; blizzards keep the family hostage in the dugout.Food is sparse and boring. Before a year passes John Schultz dies in a prairie fire. Widow Rose, educated and talented, alone with three small children, telegraphs her 80-year old widowed father, Papa Paul, "John died Come help." He does and meets Red Sun in Hair, a half-breed Scottish Cheyenne Indian spiritual leader; they become fast friends. Together they teach how to grow abundant crops on the prairie soil. Red Sun, also known and respected as Old Timer, is an educated botanist and also a medicine man. Papa Paul, a renown violinist, is also known as the Seed Man. He teaches the farmers how to research and to save the best seeds for the "seed crop" The Promise Seed. Red Sun teaches all to "listen to the Land as it tells you its secrets," and to bless the land each spring before planting. Rose becomes a leader of women's rights; she is spunky and funny. Her two sons are grown and daughter married. One son, Will, remains on the homestead without attending school beyond third grade. Handsome Hank is a scholar but also a lady's man and a gambler. Both fall in love with Julie, a beautiful immigrant from Denmark. She chooses Will to marry thus their brotherhood suffers, but Hank finds a willful widow to marry. He will always love Julie. As a result of greedy over-farming the Dust Bowl begins; then grasshoppers eat all the crops. The times are hard. Mama Rose, so brave and loved, has found contentment living with her daughter and driving her Tin Lizzy. She's a riot. but life changes as Rose suffers a stroke and dies. Her last will creates great tension as she gives all her possessions and homestead to Hank.The Great Depression begins. Sadly Will, Julie and their four children lose their farm to the bank. Trying to find work in Idaho, they have harrowing times. Julie finds her gift of painting like "O'Keeffe" brings them enough money to return home to Colorado. The Great Depression has hit everywhere. Will finds a job with the WPA for $5 a week, and the family must live in a dark basement house.. The World War II brings suspicions;German must not be spoken and Japanese Americans are interned in camps. Young son, Ernie joins the Army with a special mission that takes him into Russia and the Volge Steppes where Grandpa Paul told him about the sustainable agriculture of the area. Ernie was a Bronze Star for bravery but describes horrible events that makes one hate war. After the War things begin to change in rural areas. Will accepts a leadership role in the Rural Electric Association later becomes elected Sheriff. It is he who finds Hank's battered body in a shed on the homestead. No one believes it is an accident. But who killed Hank? Many were suspected but no one was ever charged with the murder. The novel ends with the discovery found from the grave that restores Will and Julie's role in sustainable agriculture and in Saving Mother Earth. Who killed Hank is revealed in a wondrous experience of Grandpa Will and his Grandson Paul. The Promise Seed is the "seed crop" carefully saved from one year to the next as well as the talents "inherited" by each of Will and Julie's children: (Ernie) leadership, (Serena) music, (Dusty) organic farming, and (Rachel) healing as a nurse.

• | Author: Jody Glittenberg
• | Publisher: Words With A Mission
• | Publication Date: May 30, 2018
• | Number of Pages: 298 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 0997032677
• | ISBN-13: 9780997032673