Some roads you travel. Some roads take hold of you.
We have had a few people ask what’s inside Last Ride On The Galena Coach Road and Other Tales, so here it is—clean and straight on through.
Twenty stories. One long road.
A journey that will take the reader down dusty forgotten paths... to the very edge of tomorrow.
These
are road stories—set across Illinois, the Midwest, wartime Europe, and a
near-future grid—but each one turns on something deeper: memory,
burden, choice, and the long pull of the road itself.
Complete Table of Contents with Story Highlights:
1. Notes From The Earth – A Woodland boy plays a "held note" to gain the land's permission long before the grid of settlers reshapes the world.
2. Last Ride on the Galena Coach Road
– A young Vietnam vet caught between a muscle car's momentum and a
fading stagecoach trace, meets his destiny where past and pavement
collide.
3. The Boy Who Took the Reins – A
coming-of-age tale about a young boy carrying the responsibility for a
stagecoach team, learning the weight of the road in both his hands and
heart.
4. Night Freight – A truck driver carrying a
load through a raging dust storm on Route 66 outruns his nemesis only to
find he must choose between revenge or restoration.
5. The LeMans – A high-stakes night drive in a Pontiac LeMans, where urgency, mechanical trust, and raw fear define the road ahead.
6. The Last Mile Out of Davenport – A late-night drive leads a young man onto a haunted stretch of blacktop where his brother's fatal crash still echoes.
7. The Long Road Home – A man travels a long Midwestern road where the past walks beside him, and home waits only if he can endure the journey.
8. For Your Safety – A near-future convoy story where surveillance systems and automated control turn safety into confinement.
9. Filling Station, Dusk – A quiet roadside vignette capturing human connection at a rural gas station at sunset.
10. Whiteside and The Comet
– A historical fiction piece set in the winter of 1858, blending a
celestial omen, the arrival of iron rails and the Underground Railroad.
11. Kickapoo Drift
– In the summer of 1972, fourteen-year-old June floats the Kickapoo
Creek, discovering memory has its own current, apart from the road.
12. Twilight Hollow – A mythic Midwestern tale where the land itself holds memory, resistance, and hidden bargains.
13. Out of Road – A psychological and symbolic story about reaching the literal and emotional end of the path.
14. The Store at the Fork in The Fog – A time-slip story featuring a Desert Storm veteran encountering a 1950s general store outside normal time.
15. The Road to La Ricamarie – A World War II-era story set in rural France, where a road becomes a refuge for a child.
16. Trigger Road – A historical Underground Railroad story where land, instinct, and vigilance create a hidden sanctuary.
17. Grid-Drone – A dystopian future story about resistance, mechanical freedom, and a last run in a controlled system.
18. The Reckoning at the Edge of The World – A mythic road canon combining poetry and prose, where Miller the surveyor returns to settle his final account.
19. Where The Dust Would Not Settle – A reflective story about patience, stewardship, and restoring a stretch of road through time.
20. The Road Ascendant – A final, philosophical story where a road breaks beyond the horizontal world and points upward.
From stagecoach traces to blacktop highways... from river drift to digital grid... these stories follow the marks we leave—and the ones that refuse to fade.
Slow down. Watch the verge. The reckoning is earned.
