The Perilous Journey Begins

Rich Ritter discovered a passion for writing during his tumultuous high school years. This zeal was consumed by technical writing during his lifelong profession as an architect until the age of 49, when he began work on his first novel. Ritter was born in Iowa, raised in the social cauldron of Southern California, completed his architecture degree (Cal Poly SLO) in Denmark, and is a 40-year Alaska resident. He has traveled the world in search of adventure including such diverse destinations as East Berlin (twice through Checkpoint Charlie), Russia, the British Isles, Western Europe, Scandinavia, Australia, Southern Africa, Mexico, Central America, Canada, and the United States, particularly the west. His fascination of Silver City, Idaho inspired him to write Nor Things to Come: A Trilogy of the American West, an endeavor that has consumed five years of historical research and writing. Ritter is the author of three books including Heart of Abigail, an historical novella of Juneau, Douglas, and Treadwell, Alaska.

In 1860 a Scottish lass protects her younger sister from a savage beast on the windswept highlands above Pentland Firth. An Iowa farm boy discovers a dark secret on the gory battlegrounds of Shiloh in 1862. Two years later a Colonel of the Taiping Army retreats in shame after the bloody fall of Nanjing. Born of an English father and a Sioux mother, a U.S. Cavalry Scout fights for his life on the unforgiving plains of western Kansas in 1867. During autumn of the same year, a Russian fur trapper sails from Sitka, Alaska on an American ship bound for San Francisco in a farcical quest for gold. Two years later an enigmatic law student calmly departs Budapest after the brutal murder of a corrupt policeman. In Salt Lake City during the spring of 1871, a young woman a few months shy of fifteen gallops away from her wedding reception to escape an arranged marriage. And after the dawn of the twentieth century, the winsome Muireall Anne Ravenscroft-inspired by the tragic intertwining of these seven lives-will write her definitive history of the American West. But this is only a prelude to the magnificent epic that awaits you....