Manchester
The Beginning
by
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The dawn of night was a cruel and unforgiving blow to my mind. The wicked winter’s sun was just now laying her head to rest and the warmth that her rays had given me were now but a bitter memory. It took a moment for me to realize that her long florescent hair had been cut and her bright shining smile was removed for now. The entire forest grew very dark and full of stillness. For many months I have found that this time of day was the one that I was least fond of. Everything was calm and at peace yet a ghoul like grimness crept up my spine. The wind that danced with each of the limbs in the forest during the day was no more. The animals were for the most part in their dens with their nurturing to their young. How fortunate their ignorant minds were to be concealed from uncertainties that the forest hosted during the night, but I knew better. Somewhere up on the hill a pack of wolves was trailing close behind me and I knew that they were trying to diminish my hopes of escaping, so that their attack would be easier. I found myslf not knowing what to do. I began panicking and ran randomly through the forest hoping to get away. As the tension in my mind grew the ideas of the worst clouded my weary head, “Where could my friends be? I wonder if they are all safe.” I soon realized that I had bigger problems to deal with at the moment. All of the sudden I found myself stumbling upon the edge of a cliff; I had just run out of time and places to run. It was decision time and I had less than a few seconds to commit. Do I jump and hope to live or do I attempt to fight off the wolves on my own without a weapon in the world to defend me? Neither of these are very good situations to be in, but they were the only two that fate had granted me. Therefore I just took the easier way out. I jumped, and as I fell to my death I awoke in a blanket covered in sweat while the frozen mountain terrain surrounded me. I now realize that I am in an unsettled North American territory during a blizzard. It is almost funny how we look at the events that had occurred when we are about to die. You start to think, “How in the world could it have all come down to this?” and it starts to run over and over again in your mind still making no more sense than it did earlier. I am now being tracked and hunted over foolish reasons with a man whom I barely knew existed until less than a year ago. My name is John Bishop Manchester and I am either going to freeze to death or be murdered by my own southern bigoted father. As most great stories begin, excuse me if I am being cliché but, it all really started when I was but a pup. My mother, Marian Smith, rose me from that pup to whatever you may call me now on the outskirts of Norfolk Virginia. I could just wake up, look outside the window and see the incivility of the forest next to us. I loved every moment of living in that house. I remember every single detail, every creaky board and the overall cool feeling throughout the home. I had never known my mother to lie but I never doubted that she was concealing me from the truth of our past. For the early years of my childhood I grew up in a house with one parent while most of my friends had two. There was the exception of one of my neighbor whose father had fallen in combat serving the United States army against the Redman. As sad as that was it seemed my father was nonexistent. I did my best to learn the lessons a boy my age should embrace but my free spirit often led me astray. Just to be disobedient, instead of going to school I would grab my travel sack and my flintlock rifle and I would run as fast into the forest as my legs could carry me.
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About the Book
John Bishop Manchester, a boy of sixteen, finds himself confronted with a rather adult situation at a very young and fragile point in his life. He has lived with his mother in the beautiful town of Norfolk, Virginia for the majority life and is unaware of his father's exsistance. When a pile of old secrets finds itself falling upon his mother's library floor, he flees in search of the man he would soon call his father. John finds himself in route along, with his mountain man of an uncle by the name of Frederick Manchester, to the Lexington, South Carolina tobacco plantation. Soon after his arrival, John realizes that the time to mature had come sooner than he had anticipated and finds himself in a very hostile situation. Life has finally reared its nasty head up at him and now he must take accountability for his mistakes and responsibility for the ones he holds dear. He soon finds himself traveling west in the company of a runaway slave by the name of James, two rambunctious irish brothers, and his faithful horse named Old Hickory. Not to mention a band of angry overseers who pursue their every move, led by a ruthless man by the name of Simon Monroe. In the American wild west, John will find that growing up will come natural when exposed to the unpredictability of this untamed land.
About the Author
It all started as an idea by Jon B. Smith. He was a man of many ideas and one who often enjoyed the company of other creative individuals. While brainstorming one day Jon found with great sadness that the American West was now fading from popularity and he sought to redeem it to it's former glory. One day while attending a social gathering he propsed his idea to his great friend of what would be now, thirteen years. This man's name was Berkeley Dean WIllis. Now Bekeley naturally took a liking to the more uncivil aspects of the western lifestyle but he proved himself a natural when it came to scenery description. The two of them spent hours backing up a series of obserd scenerios and by the time they finshed their rambling, The book "Manchester" was born.