Prologue

    Unknown powers created the world.  Evidence of these forces was hidden in Earth’s geology. 



    Dense metals sank to its core, while volcanoes pushed them to the surface, mixing with other elements.  Buried deep beneath the surface, great rivers of metal solidified.  Colliding tectonic plates and rain shaped the landscaped.  Plants and animals populated the world, and then humans left their Eden and migrated across the continents.



    They grew from small bands and spread across the world to metropolises that demanded vast sacrifices of the Earth’s resources and uncovering the lost rivers of metal. 



    Beneath Redwaters, these rivers ran in the midst of granite cliffs and pine trees in the area where Lake Superior and Lake Michigan meet.



    The iron ore built Redwaters’ glory days and satisfied the Industrial Revolution’s hunger for steel.  Feverish mining blasted the iron from the hills, and the money trickled down to the town.  Yet, a great war and then another ended progress, and Redwaters corroded in the economic ebb.  The mines closed, the money vanished.  The town subsisted on its trees, fueling the paper mills.



    A skeleton remained.  Old buildings turned into banks, town offices, and small restaurants.  Bricks cracked and crumbled on Main St.’s roads, and, of course, the mining tunnels never forgotten, ran beneath the hills that rimmed the town.

These mineshafts spoke through local folklore.  Most people believed they ran along the northern slope of the western hills.  However, every child grew up with tragic stories of failed offshoots, caving in on naïve hikers or reckless children.  The hills that provided the perfect temptation for sledding and exploration were viewed with cautioned.



    Lake Antoine, however, glimmered like an emerald, located at the bottom of these ferocious hills.  Water drained from the tunnels into the lake, where the town gathered for picnics in the summer and ice fishing derbies in the winter.  The dark green waters centered the town.



    Outsiders often saw the rural-borne citizens as backward, through their dialect of elongated o’s and sharp a’s from distant Saxon lands.  Yet, Redwaters’ citizens were endowed with all the emotions and motivations a person could have.  And, in their hearts, they struggled for family and values and love, but their minds processed the images of wealth and luxury and convenience that the rest of America seemed to enjoy – and for some, a battle raged between their heads and their hearts.