Children of God

The entire book takes place within one-year, late 1915 through late summer, early fall of 1916. Bernard Redden is a self-assured, rather cold individual, who does business in wholesale furs. His home is near Sacramento, California, in a fictional town of Mission Valley. One evening he rescues Lucy, an orphan girl, who is turned out of an orphanage for reaching sixteen years of age. Redden maintains a warehouse for his furs in Seattle, Washington. Rhonda, his lover, with whom he is satisfied he has no emotional connection, owns, and operates the Yukon Palace Club in Seattle. It is a gentlemen’s establishment. Bernard Redden becomes bothered by Lucy, but has no idea why. Through a series of flashbacks, he discovers that Lucy is the daughter of a half-sister he had no idea existed. As his former emotion-free life begins to unravel he also discovers his deep affection for Rhonda. Traveling to the frontier town of Lakeview, Oregon he finally discovers the horror of his half-sister’s life in frontier prostitution and that of her mother’s same life.