The First Whisper - Chapter Zero

Chapter Zero - A Story Starts Before You Realize You Are Living It

Welcome to the first glimpse of Whispers of Echo Canyon.

What you’re about to read are the opening chapters of my novel - a story about five women whose lives intersect in a desert canyon town where the past won’t stay buried and the future demands courage.

These chapters represent my finished voice, not the early drafts I shared here while writing. The complete novel (coming February 2025) is richer, deeper, and about 50% longer than what appeared in those weekly installments. Think of this as an invitation - a chance to meet Riley, Raven, Skylar, Val and Quinn before their full stories unfold.

If these women speak to you, I hope you’ll join them for the whole journey.

The Voice of the Canyon

I have been here longer than memory.

I am red stone and deep in time. I am witness and keeper. I have watched civilizations rise and fall, watched water carve me deeper, watched secrets settle into my bones like sediment, layer upon patient layer.

And I am calling them home.

Five women are coming. They don’t know it yet. Don’t know each other, don’t know what I’ve been holding in my walls for seventy years. They think they are choosing: new starts, clean breaks, second chances.

But I chose them first.

Some secrets won’t stay buried. Not even in a canyon as deep as mine. Not when the right people come asking the right questions. Not when the land itself decides it’s time.

They are driving toward the edge of maps right now. Unpacking boxes in temporary lodging that don’t yet feel like home. Standing at windows in the blue hour before dawn, wondering what comes next, if anything comes at all. Each carries something unfinished. A question that won’t quiet. A wound that won’t close. A longing that has no name. A dream deferred so long it has fossilized into something harder, something that might shatter or might finally break open.

They seek peace. Purpose. Belonging.

What they find will demand more than they know they have to give.

Raven carries the blood of the Sabákari, in her veins and her voice. The Sabákari, First Ancestors of this canyon, second only to me. She left to master the language of horses, to learn what academia could teach about behavior and psychology, to build a reputation that would carry weight in a world that rarely listens to indigenous women.

She returned to build something that honors both tradition and transformation, a training center where ancient wisdom and modern insight can sit beside each other without one diminishing the other. She doesn’t yet know that her grandmother’s final gift was not the turquoise stone warm in her pocket, but what the stone protects. A truth. A power she has not yet claimed.

Riley fled Vermont’s brutal winter with nothing but a suitcase, a sharp eye, and a reckless decision: buy a house in the desert she’s never seen. British-born in Galway, raised in Sussex, transplanted to Vermont at eleven, she learned early that home is what you build, not what you’re given.

She spent decades designing spaces for others, creating beauty and function for clients who wanted houses that would outlast them. Now she must learn what it means to belong to a place that won’t be controlled, won’t be blueprinted, won’t bend to her will no matter how carefully she plans. The canyon doesn’t care about her credentials. It only asks if she can listen.

Quinn grew up rootless. Air Force bases following her parents, from Arizona’s scorched flats to Germany’s cold stone, from Hawaii’s lush impossible green to Vermont’s white silence. She learned to adapt, to pack light, to never expect to stay.

Thirty years in Homeland Security, analyzing threats and managing crises, her gift for pattern recognition keeping strangers safe while her own life remained carefully structured, carefully small. Now she’s leaving all she’s known for the woman she left behind two decades ago, confident love can survive that much silence, that much distance, that many years of choosing duty over desire. She thinks she already knows the answers. She won’t know though, until she learns the questions.

Skylar was one of the first Black female archaeologists in her field, a pioneer who had to be twice as skilled and three times as patient to earn half the recognition. She spent decades digging for truth in ruins across continents, brushing dust from pottery shards and bone fragments, reading stories in what others left behind.

Now in her early seventies, she no longer excavates. She writes instead. Three bestselling historical novels pulled from the ruins she once studied, breathing life back into the dead through careful research and wilder imagination. But some truths can’t be written until they’re lived. And some fears run deeper than ancient stone, deeper than bone, all the way down to the genetic code that whispers what might be waiting in her own future. Alzheimer’s claimed her mother. Claimed her grandmother. The question she won’t ask out loud: will it claim her too?

Val comes from generations of fruit farmers in eastern Washington, raised in rhythms of labor and love, where the seasons ruled everything and family came first. Her mother was the heart of the farm, raising children and cherries with equal care, teaching Val that work is how you show love, how you prove your worth. Val became a nurse, drawn to the same sense of purpose and steadiness she had known among the orchards.

For decades, she cared for others without hesitation, her hands steady, her presence calm, her life anchored in work that mattered. Then her husband died too young, the second COVID taking him before either of them was ready. Her mother followed not long after. Retirement came, and with it a silence so profound it felt like drowning. Widowed, unmoored, she moved near Echo Canyon hoping to find peace.

Instead, she found herself. Empty. Invisible. A woman who has spent her entire life caring for others and has no idea who she is when no one needs her. She doesn’t yet know that emptiness makes room for transformation. That invisible doesn’t mean gone. That the canyon sees her even when she can’t see herself.

They are coming.

One of them carries the key to what was buried seventy years ago in old stone and silence.

One of them will lose everything to protect what should have stayed hidden.

And one of them will discover that some beginnings require an ending first. That you cannot step into what’s waiting without releasing what you’ve been carrying. That the canyon asks for sacrifice before it offers sanctuary.

They don’t know this yet. They’re still driving, still unpacking, still standing at windows. Still believing they can control what comes next.

The canyon has been waiting for exactly this moment. For exactly these women.

Stories don’t arrive fully formed. They emerge the way rivers carve canyons. Drop by drop, season by season, whisper by whisper. Carrying sediment that becomes stone. Carrying secrets that become truths. Carrying women who think they’re lost toward the place they were always meant to find.

These five women don’t know what they’re stepping into.

But the canyon does.

And it has already begun.