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Pink Gingerbread [MultiFormat]
eBook by Judith B. Glad
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$0.75 |
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$0.64 |
eBook Category: Romance
eBook Description: As a child, Sandra dreamed of being a superhero when she grew up, but she became a cartographer instead. Now she feels as if her life has lost all meaning. This latest mapping job takes her into Oregon's Coast Range, where she finds a ghost town that can't possibly be there. Its only inhabitant reminds her of someone she knew long ago ... the man of her dreams? Or an impossible fantasy?
eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: 2001
Fictionwise Release Date: November 2005
14 Reader Ratings:
Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [41 KB]
, ePub (EPUB) [65 KB]
, Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [18 KB]
, Portable Document Format (PDF) [252 KB]
, Palm Doc (PDB) [19 KB]
, Microsoft Reader (LIT) [63 KB]
, Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [91 KB]
, hiebook (KML) [102 KB]
, Sony Reader (LRF) [73 KB]
, iSilo (PDB) [16 KB]
, Mobipocket (PRC) [20 KB]
, Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [55 KB]
, OEBFF Format (IMP) [29 KB]
Words: 5703
Reading time: 16-22 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Portable Document Format (PDF) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED
 
There are a few ghost towns in Oregon's Coast Range. Wide spots in the road bordered with rows of clapboard clones that once were company housing for the mill workers. Sometimes there's a general store/gas station/post office still clinging to life, but more often even that's closed, and the few folks still in residence make a weekly trek to the Willamette Valley for the essentials.
"How much farther is it?" I asked my assistant, as we rounded yet another curve and looked down one more long, tree-lined tunnel. The pickup lurched into a pothole and the tires threw up a fan of muddy water. We'd had a solid two weeks of rain and I was getting tired of it, even though I'm a native Oregonian. This morning the weatherman had offered a cautious hope that the weekend might be dry. Yeah, right!
Jeff checked the map. "A mile or so, then we may have to walk the rest of the way. This map's twenty years old. You know what that means."
I knew. Roads that were once smooth and well graded could, in a few short years, disappear under dense second growth forest. The Coast Range was a logger's paradise, although little remained of the ancient forests filled with enormous trees the first settlers had written home about.
We came to a junction. I pulled the pickup off onto the grassy shoulder and killed its engine. The unpaved road that crossed ours seemed well traveled, for all there was a rivulet of water cutting its way along it. Our road seemed to end, despite the map showing it continuing on for several more miles before passing through our first goal of the day, a little place marked on the map as Everafter (site), before ending at the Flora Mainline, an abandoned railroad grade that was now a more-or-less road.
We got out and walked about a quarter mile. Sure enough, the road continued on. But we wouldn't, except afoot. Young alders had taken it over, growing close-spaced and tangled along the shoulders and median. Most were ten to fifteen feet tall, with slender gray trunks too big to circle with both my hands. Even in the concave tracks cut by countless tires, seedlings sprouted, but those were smaller and less vigorous, not quite yet winning the battle with hard packed, gravelly soil.
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