Winter has much of North America in its chilling grip. But winter doesn’t put a stop to imagination, does it? As ice locks up the lakes and rivers, and as the snowbanks grow deeper outside our doors, we can still re-live past journeys and look forward to next spring. Even in the darkest, coldest days of January, we can hear the cries of the returning geese and see bare earth poking up through the melting snow, if only in our minds.

For Brenna Trent and her husband Ed Fletcher, however, March has already arrived. Beginning this week, we’ll follow them as they get ready for the “trip of a lifetime.” We’ll look over their shoulders as they plan, and join them in checking off all the items on their gear and food lists. Then, once everything is ready, we’ll go along with them as they head north to chart the last voyage of Henry Hudson—and maybe to learn why he never returned.

 
A Reminder  This is a work of fiction. With the exception of a few public figures, whose actions and utterances are the products of the authors’ imaginations, all the characters described in this work are fictitious. And, while many locales named in this work do exist, others are entirely imaginary. Even the geography of real places has been altered from time to time for dramatic purposes. This is a work of the imagination. It isn’t a river guide.

 
Chapter One

 
Brenna Trent leaned heavily against the scuffed wooden counter, sitting half on and half off her stool. She made swift, slashing strokes with a soft pencil in a sketchbook that rested on her knee. Every so often, she glanced up at the customer standing in the cone of light illuminating the narrow aisle between two of the shop’s floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

The man was wrapped up in a wool greatcoat whose ragged hem fell below his knees. He was a terrific model for an artist, with his wild white hair and immense, straggly moustache. His jowls sagged in folds and bloomed with broken veins, framing a magnificent hawk’s beak of a nose. His eyes, too, were hawk-like, set deep in dark sockets. He looked like an Old Testament prophet who’d fallen on hard times, and he’d been browsing through the books for well over an hour. He gave no indication that he intended to buy anything.

Brenna smeared her little finger across the pencil line to enhance a shadow. When she looked up again, her eyes met the man’s. She smiled. He smirked furtively. He’d noticed her watching him before, and now he saw she was doing something—making notes, maybe?—in some kind of big pad. He started to feel nervous. He wasn’t much of a reader, but he’d come into The Book Locker to escape the chill March wind that was driving cold rain against the shop windows and rattling the bare maple branches outside. Maybe this lady knew he wasn’t going to buy anything, he thought. Even though she was smiling, her alert eyes scared him. He was scared of a lot of things these days. He grabbed a paperback off the shelf without looking at the title and took it to the counter.

“Will that be all?” Brenna asked pleasantly.

“Yep, that’s all,” the man said, rummaging for the tattered wallet in the deep pocket of his brown corduroys. Brenna set her pad down on the counter. The man saw the sketch.

“Hey,” he said, both startled and flattered to see his penciled likeness, “that’s pretty damn good.” The man grinned as he handed over two worn, one-dollar bills. “Where’d you learn to draw like that, anyway?”

“Oh, I taught myself,” Brenna said, giving the man a few pennies in change and slipping the book into a small paper bag. “Do you want the sketch?”

“Naw,” the man said, suddenly embarrassed. “Ain’t got no place to put it.” And he turned without another word and bolted for the door, brushing past the postman in the entry alcove. An icy gust blew through the stacks of musty old books. Read more…

 
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