Broken Trees

On Tobacco Plains in Southeastern B.C. during the 1940's, free running horses were being shot by the hundreds for a two dollar bounty. Feelings ran high. Bounty hunters could become the hunted. This fictional overlay on historical fact is about half brothers, sons of a man who bought - in the 1920's and sight-unseen - irrigated orchard property only to find neither the land nor the company that took his money existed. He claimed a hilltop lot anyway but his wife hated the place so much that she left him with a two year old son and returned to her eastern home. In time he has a second son by a local girl but dies without getting around to marrying her. This younger son, Jaymee, cursed with too much imagination, is the protagonist of the story. Now in trouble with, not one but two, neighbouring sisters and disillusioned with work available he leaves home at age 16. Eventually he is drawn back because of a promise given only to fall even deeper into trouble with both sisters . It takes the help of a dedicated bachelor, Uncle Ed, prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice (marriage) to set matters right. As the dust settles the eldest of the brothers likens them to four storm broken trees - "that's us, Eadie and Jaymee, Mary Lou and me. We're broken trees and we hurt people when we broke. But we are growing again - just a little misshapen."