Also, some friends who have made a difference in my life this year. Karen Roylance. Glenn Beck. Kevin Balfe. Shelli Tripp. Judy Bangerter. Patrice Archibald. The Students of Riverton High School—go Silver Rush!

As always, my dear readers. Thank you for your loyalty and goodness. There is no magic without you.

To my big brother, Dave. I still look up to you.

Contents

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Chapter Twenty-four

Chapter Twenty-five

Chapter Twenty-six

Epilogue

If you are going through Hell, keep going.

—Winston Churchill

Prologue

P R O L O G U E

I had a dream last night

that McKale came to me.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“South Dakota,” I replied.

She stared at me without speaking and I

realized that she didn’t mean my location.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Keep walking,” she said.

“Just keep walking.”

Alan Christoffersen’s diary

A few years ago I was walking through a Seattle shopping mall when a woman at a kiosk peddling discounted airfare shouted to me, “Sir, if you have a minute, I can save you nearly half on your travel!”

“Thank you,” I politely replied, “but I’m really not interested.”

Undeterred, she asked, “If you could go anywhere in the world, where would that be?”

I stopped and looked at her. “Home.” I turned and walked away.

I suppose I’m as unlikely a candidate to walk across the country as you could find. I was never one who, as Steinbeck wrote, was afflicted with “the urge to be someplace else.”

That’s not to say I haven’t traveled. I’ve done my share of it and I have the passport stamps to prove it. I’ve seen the Great Wall of China, the Hermitage in Russia, and the Roman Catacombs. Truthfully, all that travel wasn’t my idea. My wife, McKale, wanted to see the world, and I wanted to see her happy. Actually, I just wanted to see her, so I went along. The foreign locales were just different backdrops for my picture of her.

Her. Every day I miss her. I may be a closet homebody, but life has taught me that home was never a place. Home was her. The day McKale died, I lost my home.