The Mansion on the Hill

IN MEDIAS RES

The man’s head bled into the garden soil. The rest of his body sprawled strangely, oddly angled on the flagstone patio. The revolver rested just out of reach, near his left hand. Dahlias bloomed with reds, pinks, whites, yellows and crowned the poor fellow’s head. His corpse was surrounded by red flat stones and gray grout lines flowing away like wraiths on the run. Angela kicked the pistol into the garden.

*********

Three months earlier in 1919

Maggie clutched the letter with her left hand and the banister with her right. She pulled herself up the stairs at Mrs. Bennett’s boarding house two at a time. Her ankle length dress stretched to show her lower figure. A woman coming down the stairs gave her an admonishing look implying she lacked lady-like grace. Maggie did not break her stride. She knew her mother was forcing her to do this and how could she refuse? Entering the suite, she shared with Angela, she threw the letter on the dining table and sat with her hands covering her face. Her elbows never left the table as she pulled the pin and her long, red, curls tumbled down her back.

In Medias Res is Latin for, "Begin in the middle of things." It was Homer's technique and Horace encouraged his epic writing students to do the same.

"Mansion on the Hill" is the sequel to Ken Proper's historical fiction novel "A Diary by Victims of Love Banished in 1914 to Steamboat Springs, Colorado." Again, the story is about a booming western Colorado town, in Routt County, on the frontier in 1919. Prohibition was the law of the land for the entire United States and many folks believed it was a social injustice.