The Main Characters

 “Vancie Keller rocked slowly back and forth on the weather-worn porch of the farm house. She looked the part of an expensive, French, store-bought doll; and she was as uncomfortable as hell. Mattie had spent all day Friday boiling her clothes in the big wash pot in the backyard and most of the day on Saturday pressing them with a hot iron. The end result was clothes with creases so sharp that they threatened to draw blood every time that Vancie turned.”

 

“Josiah Buckland’s coarse, home-spun  clothes chaffed against the sharp angles of his adolescent frame as he strode down the middle of the  road into Tugaloo. He was not alone as he rounded the last curve of the twisting mountain road and came into sight of Main Street. A disheveled and noticeably hung-over farmer drove a small band of brown, mud-caked pigs into town in procession about twenty yards in front of him. As he struck the ones bringing up the rear, grunts and squeals joined the growing cacophony of sound and smell that is town on a market day. Josiah felt his insides rear back in revulsion as he was enveloped by the whinnying of horses, the slap of leather reins, shouts of merchants loading and unloading goods and the squeals of ragamuffin children come to town on their once a week pilgrimage.”

 

“Jagger Hill stepped lightly down from the passenger compartment of the train enveloped in a cloud of  steam  as the engine belched its last breaths  after the long struggle up the mountainside. As the vapors cleared, Jagger got his first glimpse of the village of Tugaloo in its work-a-day squalor. His attraction to  Tugaloo was not to what it was, but rather  what it might become with his help. He had spent months pouring over maps of the Southeast looking for a small town poised for the opportunity for explosive growth and the prospect of great wealth. Tugaloo was the winner.”