Out of Ashes of Love

Chy Anne Autumn Osborn

Description

Phoenix was ravaged when he left Aerielle. When their romance ended abruptly, she created a new life for herself. Can they restore what was lost?
Born of a Nez Perce mother and a white father in the second half of the twentieth century, Phoenix Stargazer has always struggled to find his place in two worlds. Called a half-breed by many, Phoenix is struggling to find his place in humankind when he falls in love with a white woman who sees past his mixed heritage and his anger to offer him her love and her God. Aerielle Buchanan, having delved past the wall Phoenix has built, has fallen in love. Yet without warning, Phoenix is torn from her life, and the two are left to live their own lives apart from each other. What will happen in 14 years when God reunites them? Bound by love and faith, but torn apart by time and circumstance, will their reunion be enough to bring them back together? Are they truly destined for each other, or was what they had only an illusion from their youth?

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Native American
• Native Americans
• American Indian
• Christian
• Romance
• Indian
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: LifeRich Publishing
• Date de parution: 14 avril 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781489746849
• Langue: English

Extrait

OUT OF ASHES OF LOVE
Chy Anne Autumn Osborn


Copyright © 2023 Chy Anne Autumn Osborn.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
LifeRich Publishing is a registered trademark of The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.
 
 
LifeRich Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.liferichpublishing.com
844-686-9607
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan.
 
ISBN: 978-1-4897-4682-5 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4897-4683-2 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-4897-4684-9 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023906200
 
 
 
LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 04/13/2023
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27

We are Pilgrims in a strange land
We are so far from our homeland
With each passing day it seems so clear
This world will never want us here
We’re not welcome in this world of wrong
We are foreigners who don’t belong
We are strangers we are aliens
We are not of this world….
Not of This World words and music by Bob Hartman performed by Petra
If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you.
John 15: 18–19, NIV
Dedication
This book is in part dedicated to the Nez Perce people, the great Nimipu. The information they provided during my trip to Idaho was invaluable. In return, I have done my best to make the telling of this story as accurate as possible. Special thanks to Scott Gilbert and Sam George of Kamiah, Idaho.
The rest of my dedication belongs to those in my life who never gave up on me or my writing, even when I doubted myself. Thank you to my long list of editors, friends, and cheering section. And most especially, thank you to my daughter, Tashina, who has never stopped believing in me or the stories I love to tell. May God use them to change and inspire those who read them.
Prologue
1978 - Idaho
A s the sun sank slowly behind a ridge of mountains, a young Indian warrior of eighteen summers and his prized spotted stallion lay side by side in an Autumn field. The stallion was dead from a bullet through the brain. The warrior might well have been dead himself, for he stirred not, and his life’s blood stained the prairie grass. Yet his heart continued to beat despite his bruised and beaten body, as well as the mass of bloody flesh his back had become when laid open by a cruel whip.
His enemies had surprised him with their abrupt arrival, their hatred, and their brutality. Just that very day, the warrior had made a vow to love, forever, the fair-skinned woman who possessed his heart—the woman claimed without reason by the one who’d held the whip.
Now, with but one sunrise between he and his beloved, the warrior had been beaten, warned, and told to stay away. To make sure that he’d listen, his enemy had threatened the same for the very woman the warrior loved. The circumstances being what they were even in this mid-twentieth century, there was no doubt his enemy had all the advantages.
Through the haze of pain that nearly consumed him, the warrior concluded the only way to keep his vow of love was to do as he’d been told. He was to leave the woman of his heart, his Morning Light, and live with the great sorrow of her loss for the remainder of his days.

It’s a view that brings forth the heart and soul of people
who have chosen to live in a different culture.
A culture that has a different beat
than the rhythm of the Reservation.
Each has chosen a path that only they
can achieve and feel content.
They speak from their hearts and soul so others may follow
a path that will lead them into two cultures….
Laverne K. Morrissey, Paiute
1
1992 - Minnesota
T he brick two-story home was old, at least one hundred years. But it had been faithfully cared for throughout its lifetime. The pine floors shone with polish, the walls were newly papered, and every room radiated the efforts of proper cleaning. Even the grounds surrounding the house spoke of stately elegance in the way of hundred-foot maples and row after row of lilac bushes, their array of color currently hidden by fall.
The house itself had many rooms. One of them, a bedroom, rested at the rear of the house on the second floor. It was a large room, with bookcases built into two walls, the shelves lined with classics by Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Shakespeare. At least one bookcase was given over to books on astronomy, while star graphs carefully framed in glass hung on several of the walls.
The central focus of the room was a full length Indian headdress made of eagle feathers, and the king size bed over which it hung. The bed resided well off the floor on a captain’s pedestal, and spread out upon it were several quilts lovingly made by a mother’s hand and stitched with Indian sign. Beneath the spread of quilts, lay a man.
Phoenix Yellow Wolf Stargazer woke to the sound of his calico purring contentedly atop his chest and the aroma of brewing coffee floating up through the open floor vent from the kitchen below. With his eyes still closed, he reached up and stroked the contented Esmeralda, who so thoughtfully greeted him each morning. She purred louder, rubbing her face against his hand. With great tenderness, Phoenix rubbed her ears. She was fourteen years old compared to his thirty-two years young.
Despite the warm welcome to the morning from his aged friend, Phoenix felt incredible loss, knowing once again an emptiness he’d tried to bury in the past. For he had dreamed about her again. Aerielle . He shouldn’t be surprised. It was fourteen years to the day since he’d done the hardest thing in his entire life. It was the day he’d given up Aerielle Buchanan, the woman he loved.
Opening his eyes, Phoenix shifted to a sitting position, cradling Esmeralda’s rumbling body against him. September morning sunshine poured through the beige curtains of two windows gracing the wall to his left. The rising sun’s bright radiance warmed the padded seat of the old rocker sitting near the far window. Cleopatra, the black Persian, had chosen this spot for her morning ablutions, while Sheba sat inside the window curtain on the sill, her tail twitching back and forth, parting the curtains with its gold length.
Gold. Spun gold. Hair like corn silk spilling over shoulders that shook with amusement. Aerielle.
Setting Esmeralda down into a nest of rumpled blankets, Phoenix swung his legs over the side of the large bed, reaching for the pair of jeans that lay at the end of it. He put them on, listening as he did so, to the hushed sounds coming from the kitchen below. He glanced at his watch. Seven o’clock. Sofia, good friend and coworker, was early this morning, not for the first time, and not that it mattered. Phoenix was generally up by now, and his brother Hawk, asleep across the hall, could remain unconscious through almost anything.
From a nearby drawer, Phoenix retrieved a red T-shirt and pulled it on, conveniently hiding a multitude of white scars that laced his back. Reaching up, he slid his long hair free of the T-shirt, letting the length of his tangled mane fall freely. He’d comb it later. Right now the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee was beckoning.
Lifting Esmeralda into the crook of one arm, Phoenix started for the open bedroom door. Spock and McCoy, his two German shepherds, sprang off the braided rugs they slept on, eager to follow.
“Mornin’, boys,” said Phoenix, reaching down to pat each of them on the head and rubbing an ear or two. Their tails whipped back and forth in greeting, thumping the door frame as they left the room. Thankfully they got along better than their namesakes.
Spock was first down the enclosed stairwell, the sound of his paws muffled on the carpeted steps that followed the dark pine railing to the large foyer below. Then his nails clattered across the wood floor as he made for the kitchen at the rear of the house.
When Phoenix entered the room with McCoy at his side, Sofia had already let Spock out into the backyard. The door was once again held open, and McCoy glided out to join his brother.
Twenty-seven-year-old Sofia Bendetti turned from the door, black curls dancing about her shoulders. Her hair was the color Phoenix’s should have been had he received more of the Nez Perce blood from his mother. But like Crazy Horse, the Cheyenne chief of old, his hair was wavy and a dark muddy brown. His eyes, on the other hand, were the color of obsidian, unlike Sofia’s, which were brown and decidedly