Ben H. English
Alpine, Texas

DESTINY’S WAY: A NOVEL OF THE BIG BEND

“Surrounded by the northern reaches of the Chihuahuan Desert, it also marked the end of the line for the ancient, crumbling remains of the Ouachitas. Even mountains die, given enough time, and the Ouachitas were slowly dissolving away, decaying relics mastered by other ranges that rose up and reached for the heavens hundreds of millions of years later.

This collision with far younger mountains, as well as those of the Sierra Madre Oriental from Old Mexico, made for geological strata and anomalies not found anywhere else on the North American continent. They say that when God finished making the world, He took everything left over and deposited it in the Big Bend. When one took inventory of what was there, that whimsical adage took on a dimensionally larger meaning. For here lay mysteries upon mysteries compounded by time, nature and human imagination.

Different? Yes, almost in a forbidding way. But this sphinxlike, timeworn place had called out to her with the bewitching song of a desert siren. At first, she had very much been a stranger in a strange land. But here she had stayed and found a temporary home, providing solace for broken dreams and near-broken hearts…”

These are the lines that help introduce the main female character in my latest book ‘Destiny’s Way.’ Kate is a strong willed woman who has faced a great deal of tragedy and disappointment in her life, and coming to the Big Bend was in her instinct when the entire world seemed set against her. Or far worse, could have cared less.

This country can mend a heart or just as easily break one, some would say the latter comes easier. I have seen it go both ways repeatedly, and often a person has no real idea of their fate until the moment they see sunshine or shipwreck.

And those desert sirens just keep singing out, bringing both hope and doom to those castaway dreamers who seek them out…

Ben H. English
Alpine, Texas