There is a chapter in my book which describes the early settlers of the American frontier. In the opening scene, I place the action in the Shenandoah Valley of the Virginia colony. It was a very dangerous place still hotly contested by warring tribes of Indians that used the valley to hunt and transit both North and South. Anyone daring to trespass was taking a great risk. The British army did not offer protection west of the Blue Ridge and certainly not west of the Shenandoah River. Colonist were on their own. Seeking opportunity and that sense of all important freedom from authority, desperate characters in Wrathful Empathies trudged through this wilderness often to their doom. Their quest, however, was timeless. Today, people living under authoritarian regimes all over the world flee the same sense of hopelessness. They sense their situation is so bad as to be impossible to deal with. Like many of my characters, they simply run off into the woods and take the ultimate risk.
