May Novel Essential Information

Novel Title: Clouding

Time Setting: 1872

Genre: Historical Fiction

Minimum Word Goal: 90,000

Timespan: September

Location: Tucson, Arizona Territory

Main Characters: Asher Kingston, Theresa Rose

Background Information:

Asher was born the only child of an alcoholic ex-soldier and a white-raised Navajo woman, and he was their only child because of his father's many liquor-induced rages, during which his father would beat his mother; including when she was expecting their second child, which forced her to miscarry and end up being rendered sterile.

When he was seven his father took the family west to California to seek gold, which he spent on liquor when he found it, although he found little.

As a result of his difficulty finding much gold, Asher's father took to robbing the homes of nearby prospectors for their gold, and would get drunk on the liquor he purchased with his ill-gotten gains.

One night, in a rage by liquor bought with stolen gold, his father beat his mother to death. When his father sobered up, he thought someone else had broken in and murdered his wife, and thus killed nearby prospectors and absorbed their claims in revenge and a hunt for more gold.

Eventually the nearest sheriff decided to take action against him, so Asher's father packed Asher up and fled back to Santa Fe — where they'd come to California from — and, without his mother, it became Asher's place to be beaten by his father in drunken rages.

At fifteen Asher decided he'd had enough of his father's abuses and ran away from home, first heading back to California to visit his mother's grave.

On the way there he encountered a man who was leading a sizeable herd of horses, but thought nothing of it until he woke up the next morning horseless.

Infuriated, Asher tracked the man down on foot and killed him before leading the herd of horses to the nearest town, where he was paid handsomely for catching one of the most notorious horse thieves in the area.

The reward intrigued Asher, prompting him to decide to track down other wanted criminals to get paid the rewards placed on their heads. This led to his current reputation as being one of the most renowned bounty hunters west of the Mississippi because he always gets his man.

Adding to his iconic image is his horse, a black leopard Appaloosa mare whom he was given by the Nez Perce when his previous horse had died in a blizzard and he himself had nearly frozen to death. As few white people have ever seen such a horse, she is an immediate attention-getter.

With her, Asher wanders the west hunting criminals and cashing in on rewards while the legend of the Hunter — as many people call him, and so frequently so that some people believe it's his name — continues to grow.

Born the sixth of eight children to her parents, who farmed in southern Wisconsin — where her father had also been born and raised — Theresa lived a pleasant childhood there for her first nine years.

When she was nine, a neighbouring house caught fire and the flames spread to her family's home, claiming the entire building.

Prompted by this loss, her parents — who'd been feeling like the area of Wisconsin they lived in was getting too crowded — decided to head south at the invitation of one of her uncles.

They went south to the Sonoma Desert and the town of Tucson therein, where her father settled down to farming in the much less crowded New Mexico Territory.

After several years her father, having become renowned for his dedication to the law, was asked to become the sheriff of Tucson when the town's current sheriff died. He accepted the position, handed the farm over to her oldest brother, and moved the rest of the family into town.

Since then, Theresa's father has become renowned for making Tucson one of the most just towns in the west, not the sort of place that any criminal could stay long before getting caught and given what they deserve.

Theresa's siblings have all gotten married quite soon after becoming old enough to do so, with her brother immediately older than her having married in the summer previous being the most recent to do so.

This is Theresa's hope as well, but her searches for a man she'd like to marry in Tucson have been futile to this point, leading to fears that she might be an old maid or a spinster. Since the new year, however, those fears have been allayed.

The town doctor's nephew, freshly graduated from medical school, came to Tucson at the beginning of the year to apprentice under his uncle, and the attraction between him and Theresa has been immediate and mutual, leading to the married women in town predicting marriage and a bevy of children while the unmarried ladies in town look on jealously due to the handsomeness of the young doctor.

To this point, he has not proposed to her, but Theresa is confident that they'll be getting married in the autumn of 1873, and she is more than eager to bid adieu to her singleness.