Magnificat
The Sino wasn’t a war. It only looked like that to the casual observer. Really, the Sino was an Armageddon.
—Former President Jack Kanton
48th President of the United States
On the 29th Anniversary of the start of the
Sino-American War
July 28, 2057
(i)
Holy Mary, Mother of God, help me to tell my story right, ’cause the memories make it hard. Some are sharp, like the devil’s thorn weeds that grew out of the dandelion patch near my daddy’s grave. Others are pretty, like those dandelion flowers in spring sunshine.
I’ve read a lot about the tragedies of the first half of the twenty-first century. Lots of history books about the Sino-American war, and the Sino is a hard bit of bacon for anyone to chew, Chinese and Americans alike. Lots of novels and videos about the Yellowstone Knockout and the five states it plunged into darkness: New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. Otherwise known as the Juniper.
My story is about what happened after all that—after the city people left the Juniper, after the salvage operators took everything that wasn’t nailed down and folks started ranching and farming. A story about how my love for a boy almost got my family killed when everything we ever loved was in dire jeopardy and our only hope was on a gamble; bad cards in an impossible poker game with the Devil grinning us down. A love story, an adventure, but also a family drama about three sisters who loved each other as much as they hated each other as much as they wanted to be like one another.
When I was sixteen, I was living in Cleveland, Ohio, going to the Sally Browne Burke Academy for the Moral and Literate. A bright future lay ahead of me. That all changed forever on the Ash Wednesday of 2058, a holy day of obligation that broke my heart.
Like always, my sister Wren did the heartbreaking. She was good at that.