After a long winter encampment, Orenda, Nazshoni, Kanuna and Onsi cross the Mississippi river and venture west. Their destination is far and Orenda intends to move the small group of warriors with haste in the hope of reaching an embattled tribe far to the west of the great river.

The plan begins to unravel when they come across a ghost village and then dire forebodings from an old Shaman. There is a shape-shifter in the area and she has been causing much destruction and despair. Orenda attempts to go around the troubled area as he feels tomahawks and arrows are no match against magic. But the Deer Woman is already aware of the warrior's presence in her territory.

If you enjoyed The Bitter Harvest, you'll not want to miss the continuing adventures of Orenda and his small group of heroes.

For each of us, life is often a MYSTERY.

We try and make sense of where we come from, we grapple with the problem of why there is so much suffering in the world, why is it that unscrupulous people can continue to exploit innocent, well-meaning people – the list of questions is endless.

Then there are questions that deal with realities beyond our individual experiences which we would dearly love to get more insight on - questions like:

·         What is the ultimate purpose of my life

·         How do I cope with incurable disease like cancer, congenital muscular dystrophy and others

·         How can I find peace of mind

·         Is there life after death, and if there is, what form does it take

·         Why is it so difficult to forgive people who have caused me serious harm

There are, of course many resources that deal with the questions listed above.

In Living by the BOOK we use one resource – the Christian Bible (the BOOK) to shed some light on some of these deep questions, and how the knowledge gained affects our daily life.

The topics covered include:

Three of us – Wolfgang Bernhardt, Sarie Snow and Derek Griffin – have worked on this challenging topic for two years in order to give you, the reader, ideas on what light the BOOK sheds to help us understand this mystery we call “LIFE”, and how to live it so that, when we are done, we can leave with no regrets.

Corporate drop-out Johnny Donohue has his leisurely routine in Florida interrupted when he is called to his home town on Long Island to attend the funeral of Willie Haggerty, the father of his former sweetheart.

What began as the death of an old family friend soon had Johnny digging deeper into the affairs of his former lover and her family. Willie was a brilliant scientist who left the world of weapons development after he saw the horror of the nuclear bomb in World War II.

Early in the war, Willie was assigned to work with Alan Turing, the greatest mathematician in history, to solve the mystery of the German Enigma Machine. Both men worked feverishly to reduce the number of casualties in the war. Their well intentioned contributions to science become the source of greed, murder and fraud.

Johnny follows a series of clues that point to Alan Turing potentially having the key to uncovering a vast Nazi treasure that has eluded international criminals. When it becomes clear that the life of Johnny's former lover is in danger he prepares to take on some big players in the mysterious world of precious metals.

Johnny creates a brilliant plan to find the hidden treasure and protect the reputation of a top atomic scientist. Donohue is playing a difficult game competing against a sea of professionals who will stop at nothing to walk off with secret Nazi treasure.

Meanwhile Johnny's love life is spiraling out of control with the strong pull of his previous world calling to him. Johnny's relationship with Carmen is in dire need of repair after his long absence from her side. Both women may choose another way to go as life's choices may be sending Johnny in a new direction.

For some war is an inspiring, uplifting, and a liberating occurrence.  Such is the case of Emil Dorfmeister.  Abandon without a name to the St. Katherine Order in Posen, Dorfmeister received an excellent education but, because he was an orphan, no employment opportunities.  He left the sisters' care at an early age to wander from one job to the next picking up experiences and, when working in the coal mines of Silesia, Russian as a second language.  When the Great War started, he volunteered and fought for three years in the trenches of France gaining a new talent as a machine gun sharpshooter.  But his real asset was in knowing Russian.  He was culled from a pillbox crew and sent to Ukraine as part of an occupation force which had transcended its original purpose as a restorer of the Ukrainian government to a pillaging horde that indiscriminately seized Ukrainian food to ship back to Germany.  Into his life came Tatianna Brendt, the daughter of German parents living along the Volga.  Before the Revolution, Brendt had received an education at the Women's Institute in Kiev and found work with a legal firm in Kharkov.  The Revolution destroyed the Tsarist legal system putting her out of a job but Brendt took an active part in furthering women's rights in the Bolshevik party.  She was zealous and soon drew the envy and ridicule of those who were not comfortable with a woman having so much influence.  She was forced out of her apartment due to rumors of promiscuous behaviors, fired from her job as an influencer, and relegated to living on the Kharkov streets with only the clothes on her back in February.  Then an opportunity came her way.  Because she could read and write Russian and German, the new secret police, the CHEKA, recruited her to spy for them in Ukraine.  She was dressed up and left to find someone she could attach herself to among the German occupation force.  She found that someone in Emil Dorfmeister.

     Warm, well-clothed, well fed, and safe, Brendt began her spying career with the help of Dorfmeister who had become fed-up with the ruthlessness of his superiors in looting Ukrainian resources.  It soon came to pass that efforts to collect grain and other food supplies in his area of administration to send back to Germany came to naught and armed resistance to collection caravans increased.  Before Dorfmeister's superiors could launch an investigation, the war ended and the Germans were forced to evacuate Ukraine.  Dorfmeister's last acts as an administrator were to send Brendt north while he boarded a train to Germany.  Brendt succeeded in gaining Bolshevik Russia but the part of the train that Dorfmeister was in was blown up by inept Bolshevik partisans.  The train, relatively unharmed, continued its journey leaving Dorfmeister behind to either walk out of Russia or join the partisans to stay alive.  He chose to use his skill as a machine gunner with the partisans.  Brendt went on to spy on Leon Trotsky and the antirevolutionary General Wrangel for the CHEKA.  Dorfmeister, in his turn, joined Wrangel's army after being captured and given a choice of join or be executed.

     Brendt and Dorfmeister came within a hair's breathe of meeting again and again.  Brendt secretly contributed to Dorfmeister's recovery from wounds in Simferopol and nearly came to a reunion in Constantinople after the evacuation of Wrangel's army from the Crimea.  Dorfmeister was never aware of who his benefactor was and as a result fled Constantinople to take a job of training the pan-Moslem army of Enver Pasha in Turkestan.

     The final acts of the story play out in Afghanistan and the new kingdom of Yugoslavia.  Both paths are tainted by the past.