Published by Self-published Genres: Historical, Romance
It is 1896 in the Yukon Territory, Canada. The largest gold strike in the annals of human history has just been made; however, word of the discovery will not reach the outside world for another year.
By happenstance, a fifty-nine-year-old Huck Finn and his lady friend, Molly Lee, are on hand, but they are not interested in gold. They have come to that neck of the woods seeking adventure.
Someone should have warned them, “Be careful what you wish for.”
When disaster strikes, they volunteer to save the day by making an arduous six hundred mile journey by dog sled in the depths of a Yukon winter. They race against time, nature, and man. With the temperature hovering around seventy degrees below zero, they must fight every day if they are to live to see the next.
On the frozen trail, they are put upon by murderers, hungry wolves, and hostile Indians, but those adversaries have nothing over the weather. At seventy below, your spit freezes a foot from your face. Your cheeks burn—your skin turns purple and black as it dies from the cold. You are in constant danger of losing fingers and toes to frostbite.
It is into this world that Huck and Molly race.
They cannot stop. They cannot turn back. They can only go on. Lives hang in the balance—including theirs.
My name is Andrew Joyce and I write books for a living. Stephanie has been kind enough to allow me a little space on her blog to promote my new novel RESOLUTION: Huck Finn’s Greatest Adventure. I think it’s a good book, but what do I know? Anyway, I’m kinda shy about tooting my own horn. So, instead, I thought I’d try to entertain you today with one of my short stories.
Butch and Sam
He spent the night out on the town running with his own kind, and they made a night of it. But it wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted a home. He wanted to be loved. He had been taken from his mother when he was quite young. In fact, he could barely remember his mother or his siblings. He had been given to a family that did not treat him well, and at the first opportunity, he ran away.
He was tired, but on his way to find a place to sleep away the day, he came upon a young boy of about twelve years of age. The boy, whose name was Butch, smiled when he saw him.
“Hi. What’s your name?” asked the boy.
What’s my name? he thought. I don’t know! No one has ever addressed me by anything other than Hey you! When I’m looking for something to eat in the trashcan behind the old lady’s house down the street and she catches me, she always says, “Hey you! Get out of here.” Then she takes a broom to me.
Butch approached, knelt down to eye level and said, “I like you. I think I’ll name you Sam.”
At that, his tail started to wag. Sam sounds like a fine name, he thought.
And so it was that the boy Butch and the dog Sam became fast friends.
Sam had finally found the love he had so yearned for all his life.
I would like to thank Stephanie for inviting me onto her blog. It’s been a real pleasure.
Andrew Joyce
What a sweet story! And I loved the surprise at the end, nicely played, Mr. Joyce! Thanks for a great guest post, Stephanie–nice-looking blog, too. (I want to reblog but don’t see that button; I did share it to my human’s Facebook page, though, in a public post.) By the way, I can tell your followers that RESOLUTION is a great story, a page-turner. I don’t really know what that is but that’s what my human called it. She’s read all of the Joyce books and in her “humble opinion,” he’s a great writer.