So the contest is entered. The contest Amazon is having for unpublished novels, that is. There’s a grand prize of $50,000 – can you imagine? There are four first prizes, for four different categories, and I plan to win the fiction category for $15,000! Still can’t imagine it 🙂 I’m still editing like crazy and can update my entry for another week. The contest came along sooner than I would have I liked but what could I do? I’ll have it ready and the judges will be wowed. Here’s my pitch, a major project in itself that required a lot of helpful input. Hopefully it will do the trick, for the contest judges and my future fans 😀

The Mitchells were a good team, a doctor and nurse from Boston, with plans to take their son and their medical skills to Pony Ridge, a boarding school on the Nez Perce Reservation in Idaho. After her husband’s accidental death, Calandra bravely journeyed west with Everett to fulfill her husband’s lifelong dream. She hoped she was making the right decision.
Calandra and Everett quickly discovered the appeal of the West, the wide open landscape and colorful cultures. Their life was good at Pony Ridge. Did it take a turn for the better or worse when Calandra fell in love with a Nez Perce man, a member of Chief Joseph’s doomed band? Sky was a good husband and a good father, but Everett struggled with his hatred of the man – was it jealousy, prejudice, or loyalty to his father? Or Billy’s influence? Grass was Everett’s best friend, but Billy was his friend too, an older white student. He was also the school bully and known for his contempt of Indians.
A school campout when Everett was fourteen turned to tragedy when he and Billy were involved in a fight, and a young Indian student named Blue was killed. Was it an accident or did Billy shove him? To some it looked like Everett pushed Blue off that ledge. Sure of trouble with the law, Billy convinced Everett to run. Hopping freight trains, they headed east, enlisting in a war they knew nothing about. By the time Everett was injured near the end of World War I, he had grown into a man, and it was time to come to terms with the war in his own heart, to make his own life decisions – first was making things right with his mother and Sky, if it wasn’t too late.