BIO:
By the age of seven, Rebecca S. Nieminen had fallen in love with books and aspired to one day write her own. In 1998, she earned a bachelor’s in journalism, and in 2010, a master’s in English, both from Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio. For nearly two decades Rebecca worked as a reporter and then freelancer for a mid-sized daily newspaper, The Vindicator, also based in Youngstown.
A lifelong resident of Northeastern Ohio, Rebecca has long been passionate about local history and is an avid researcher of 1800s Ohio. She is also an avid antiques collector and genealogist, with a particular interest in the Finnish branch of her family tree. Rebecca strives to display “sisu” in her approach to life. “Sisu” is a Finnish word defined as “determination, tenacity of purpose, courage and resilience, despite the odds.”
For several years Rebecca was a single parent, raising two young children on a shoestring budget. She tabled her writing ambitions during this hectic time, but when one of her manuscripts was a finalist for the Eludia Award, it helped inspire her to later self-publish an updated version of that manuscript. Titled The Dance of the White Deer, this debut novel is a work of literary, historical fiction based on true events. Rebecca plans to publish a sequel to The Dance of the White Deer. She also has other historical novels planned, as well as novels that will take place in modern settings.
In addition to her accomplishments as a writer, Rebecca is a seasoned visual artist and has worked as a professional photographer for nearly a decade, specializing in both portraits and landscapes. Her landscapes have received recognition and praise, and her work has been featured in many Ohio art galleries. Many of her photos depict rural Ohio and showcase its weathered barns, windswept lighthouses, and idyllic farm scenes. She is known as an artist who produces images with soft, dream-like quality, gorgeous golden light and dramatic colorful skies.
Rebecca enjoys the comforts of home but also loves to travel with her significant other. Together they have traveled the back roads from Maine to Michigan, with Rebecca snapping photos along the way.
To view Rebecca’s photography you can visit her web site: https://storytellerphotographyimagesbyrebecca.com/
She also has a photography business page on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StorytellerPhotographyImagesbyRebecca/
And she has an author’s page on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/Rebecca-S-Nieminen-Author-101179869366833
THE DANCE OF THE WHITE DEER
CHAPTER ONE
Ohio’s Western Reserve, 1825
The boy—not yet a man—was tall and lean, with ruffled hair the color of flax and steady eyes the color of sky. He’d turned nineteen on his last birthday, but already he stood a head above his father, a stockier, more compact figure with the same fair hair and blue eyes. On this day, both father and son were crouched atop a cabin roof positioning wooden shakes into place. They’d spent the morning splitting the shakes from a log, the hollow plunks of their chunky mallets echoing through the green woods while the warm June sunlight splashed down upon their laboring shoulders.
Plick, plack. Plick, plack.
They worked with an oiled synchronicity, and one by one the shakes were fastened into place over the rough boards until the skeleton framework of logs gained the shape of a roof. By evening, they would have this job all but finished, and their new neighbor, a man by the name of Isaac Stone, would have a snug, tight ceiling to shelter him and his womenfolk from the wind and weather.
And judging by the wispy clouds cloistering in the West—the kind of clouds the boy’s father always called “horsetails”—it would likely rain by nightfall. Not that they needed any rain. Already the land was wet and lush from a season that had been plentiful with showers, and the newly-cleared fields were stumpy seas of mud for the tireless settlers who struggled to transform stubborn, untamed forest into obedient farmland.
The boy—Aaron Harper—and his father—Josiah Harper—were two of those settlers. The Harpers were among the flock of sturdy New Englanders who had come to the Western Reserve to wage a back-breaking war upon the acres of mighty trees. Folks such as them felled the giant oaks and maples one by one so they might cultivate the rich Ohio soil and change the wooded acreage to sweeping expanses of crops.
The Harpers had arrived in Ohio nearly two decades before, and for as long as he could remember, Aaron had been working alongside his father to build a prosperous farm. Aaron wondered, though, what sort of working man their new neighbor Isaac Stone might be. The boy thought it rather puzzling how long Stone’s cabin roof had remained unfinished. For almost two weeks since arriving in Prosperity Creek, Isaac Stone and his wife and three step-daughters had been living in the half-finished cabin with no shakes on the roof and no door to ward off the forest beasts that roamed the black nights.
Stone’s brother had started building the cabin the previous spring, but before he could finish the job, he had taken sick and died. Then for nearly a year the cabin had sat idle in its little woodland clearing. It was a forlorn sight with wide gaps between the silvering logs, no roof to keep it from filling with snow during winter, and a door-less entry that gaped like a toothless mouth at anyone who happened to pass by.
As Aaron straddled the ridgepole, he considered what it would be like to sleep in that cabin with no roof and no door. He envisioned the dark bowl of stars overhead and the firelight’s long, inky shadows leaping across the rough log walls, and he decided it would be a frightful thing, particularly for Isaac Stone’s womenfolk. The rainy weather of late would also make it a cold and wretched thing, for although it was early June, most nights remained chilly and damp.
The laziness of the unfinished cabin perplexed Aaron not only because he had been taught never to shirk a chore, but also because most settlers went to work straight away on building their dwellings once they came to the Ohio.
Stone was different, though. After coming West from Pennsylvania to claim his dead brother’s bit of land, he had lulled and sipped corn whiskey instead of making haste to complete the half-finished cabin. Stone didn’t seem to care about the tangle of brambles that plagued the cabin’s lumpy dirt floor, or if a raccoon, or an opossum, or even a hungry bear wandered in at night through the flimsy quilt that flapped over the doorway.
Aaron, on the other hand, had been brought up to do tomorrow’s work today. Since coming to Ohio his father had labored hard, and the dedication showed, for the Harpers were one of the few families in the settlement to inhabit a frame house instead of a cabin. Not many folks in this new country could call such a fine dwelling home, or call themselves owners of cows for milking, oxen for plowing, hogs for butchering, sheep for shearing, horses for traveling and a dooryard full of fowl for eggs and downy feathers. No, there wasn’t a better farm than the Harpers’ in all of Prosperity Creek, and Aaron knew his father wouldn’t have it any other way.
It was Aaron’s father who spoke now, remarking to Isaac Stone, who was working alongside them on the cabin roof, that the afternoon was growing plentiful warm. Stone grunted in agreement. Stone was a tall, sinewy man, with heavy forearms and big hands, a large, lion-like head, a long nose, a full black beard and piercing hazel eyes framed by two thick brows. His demeanor was surly and gruff, as if he were greatly annoyed by the completion of the chore at hand. He reminded Aaron of a tomcat they’d once owned. It would get into moody fits and yowl and claw at anyone who dared to touch it. Glancing at Stone now, his long frame crouched uncomfortably, Aaron thought he seemed just as ornery, like a displaced circus lion on the cabin roof.
Stone wiped his glistening brow and glanced to the ground below where he spotted his wife, a woman called Lucinda. He clapped his big palms together to capture her attention.
“Water!” he shouted to her, and as if she couldn’t comprehend, he widened his eyes, opened his lips and motioned one of his hands to his mouth as if he were tipping back a beverage.
Lucinda Stone, a short, pale, heavy-breasted female with a sparse knot of reddish-golden hair tied at the nape of her plump neck, halted what she was doing and scurried into action. Aaron paused to watch her as she fetched an earthenware jug and then hurried to awkwardly ascend the crude little ladder toward the rooftop of thirsty men. Previously, she had been seated on a log mixing clay and twigs to make chinking for the gaps between the cabin walls. Aaron noted that her fingers were still brownish-gray with clay residue as she handed the jug to her husband.
Lucinda and her three daughters had been venturing to and from Prosperity Creek all morning, lugging back heavy buckets of clay. When one batch of chinking was mixed and stuffed between the cracks in the log walls, the women carried their wooden pails to the creek’s edge and started the process over again. Now and then Aaron had noticed them disappearing down the narrow path through the trees and then reappearing again, their white arms muddied to the elbows. Aaron was not close enough to hear them speak and couldn’t clearly see their faces behind their bonnet brims, but sometimes when they gathered near the cabin to mix the chinking, he caught bits and pieces of their talk.
From what he could tell, the youngest daughter, a dimpled, towheaded chit called Charlotte, and the middle daughter, a skinny, freckled redhead called Fanny, were engaged in what seemed a ceaseless bout of bickering over who could gather the most twigs. Meanwhile, the eldest daughter, a girl called Limery, tried to quietly restrain the prattling and restore order while Lucinda Stone slopped chinking into the gaps between the logs in a sort of mechanical daze.
It seemed to Aaron that Lucinda left the duty of mothering the younger girls to Limery. Aaron also noted that it was Limery who stepped away from the chinking every now and then to tend to a stew that simmered in a black iron kettle over an open fire. She would stir the pot quickly, poke at the fire, and then hasten back to her other chores with a practiced agility. On different occasions that morning, Aaron had stolen a number of glances at the eldest girl. Although her face was mostly obscured behind her wide-brimmed bonnet, he guessed she was about his age. He noted the way her slender yet shapely form filled out her simple homespun work dress, the way her dark hair spilled down her back, and the smooth, upright way she walked. She was taller than her mother, and when she chided her younger sisters, her voice was soft despite the reprimand.
Presently, as the men paused in their work to take turns wetting their throats with the cool, sweet water from the earthenware jug, Aaron turned again to study the girl called Limery. She was standing once more at the kettle, and as she stirred the pot with a long handled spoon, an appetizing aroma floated on the air. When the tantalizing smell filled their nostrils, a collective realization of hunger seemed to sweep over the men.
Stone downed the last of the water and said, “We’ll stop now for some of that stew.”
The sun was high and bright as the men climbed down from the rooftop. Aaron stretched his long legs as he waited for his portion of vittles while Limery ladled the stew into crude wooden bowls and Lucinda served the steaming helpings to the men. The stew was rabbit, with slivers of onion and turnip, and after taking the first bite Aaron realized just how hungry he really was. He folded his lean frame onto a chopped log that acted as a makeshift stool and ate his fill.
Aaron’s mother had sent a loaf of bread along with her husband and son, and Aaron’s father offered the loaf to Lucinda to slice and share amongst them all. The men were silent as they dipped hunks of the crust into the stew, and for a time all were too busy eating to make conversation. Aaron noted that Isaac Stone dined with animal vigor, working tender morsels in his bearded cheek and then smacking his lips noisily together. Stone finished before any of them, belched loudly and commanded Lucinda to fetch him his clay pipe.
“I’ll have me a smoke,” he said to her, and she hurried to do his bidding.
Only after everyone else was busy daubing bread crusts in their stew bowls did Limery take a seat on a nearby log and make ready to eat. Aaron watched as she balanced her bowl on her knees and shook her bonnet back to let the fresh air and sunshine touch her hair. It was then for the first time that day that he got a good look at her.
He gawked at the simple revelation.
Although her brow was damp with sweat and her cheek smudged with clay, her beauty was unmistakable. Her striking young face remained freshly arresting with its luminous gray eyes, wide forehead and delicately pointed chin. Her mouth was supple and pink, the lower lip thicker than the upper, which curved sweetly like a cupid’s bow. In an instant Aaron compared her to all of the other girls he had ever seen, girls who were sallow or riddled with pocks, girls with crooked smiles, or even handsome girls who carried themselves proudly but whose cruel inner selves bled through to spoil whatever looked lovely on the outside. Those girls were as plentiful as berries in summer, but there was something rare and singular about this girl that struck him—struck him literally dumb, for he scarcely even heard when his father spoke to him.
“Aaron,” his father repeated, “have you lost your senses? I asked you twice now if you recalled the white buck we saw last month down by the creek?”
Aaron jerked his head forward to find both his father and Isaac Stone staring at him. There was a playful twinkle in his father’s blue eyes, and Aaron knew immediately that the older man was reading him like the pages of a book.
His father glanced purposefully to Limery and remarked dryly, “There may indeed be better things to see here than me, but I do hope for an answer when I ask a question.” His father’s lips twisted into a bemused smirk, and Aaron felt his face flush hot. He didn’t dare look toward the girl called Limery, for he had no doubt she had also heard his father’s jest and understood exactly what it meant. Isaac Stone, however, wasn’t amused. He studied Aaron sharply, his pipe stem working between his clenched teeth, his hazel eyes glittering darkly, but he said nothing.
Josiah cleared his throat and continued, “That white buck has been roaming Prosperity Creek for nearly two years now. Aaron and I saw it not long ago. Not a soul dares to bring it down for fear of bad luck. You know what the Indians say about killing a white deer—a curse upon any man who dares to do so.”
Stone handled his pipe and nodded with interest. He was a proficient hunter, and this local legend of the albino stag intrigued him.
“Reckon there’s no such thing as luck and curses, and if I see it, I can kill it,” he said amid a cloud of pipe smoke. “And if I do, I’ll use the hide to make a white cloak for Limery there.” Isaac motioned a long finger his eldest stepdaughter who still sat on her log, finishing her stew.
At the mention of her name, Limery’s bowed head shot up and she flinched as if she had been smacked. Her wide gray eyes focused on her stepfather with a look Aaron couldn’t quite discern. It was as if the finger he pointed in her direction had reached painfully into her very soul. For a moment something passed between the girl and the man, something murky and unmentionable that vanished just as quickly as it had appeared.
Josiah didn’t seem to notice and continued mildly, “Well, if you did shoot it, you’d be the talk of Prosperity Creek, I wager. There’s been more than one white deer living here through the years, but nobody dares to hunt them. Every once in a while a new one crops up. They never seem to live too awful long, of course, sticking out like a sore thumb.”
“That they do indeed,” Isaac Stone agreed. “You can spot ‘em a mile away. Easy prey.”
Josiah took another bite of stew before continuing, “The Indians used to do a dance to honor the white deer. I saw them dancing once after my wife and I first settled here years back. They’d gather in a circle down in the river bottoms when the moon was full. One half of the dancers painted their faces white and danced for good, and the other half painted their faces black and danced for evil. The good would always win, and the white deer would become immortal and fly away by the light of the full moon.”
Isaac grunted and chewed on the stem of his pipe.
“Hmmph,” he grunted, unimpressed. “I don’t put no stock in Injun hullabaloo. The meat tastes just the same whether the deer hide is brown or white. If I can draw a bead on it, I reckon it’s mine for the takin’, and I’ll take what I can. I never seen game so plentiful as I seen out here.”
Josiah nodded. He, himself, didn’t put much stock in Indian superstitions, but he would never think of killing a white deer. Josiah took a last bite of stew, squinted up to the cabin roof and said, “Well, we best get back to our work soon. The boy and I ought to be home before nightfall. We are much obliged to you, Mrs. Stone, for this fine meal.”
Lucinda, who had until then been silent, bobbed her head with nervous acknowledgement. When she spoke her voice was thin and distant, like a mouse’s muffled squeak in an underground burrow.
“Thankee for your help with the roof, Mr. Harper. Good neighbors like you are one of God’s blessings.”
* * *
Aaron and his father were home by sundown. They had left Isaac Stone with a new roof on his cabin and the promise of neighborly assistance should it ever be required. Stone had offered them the same, but Aaron doubted the man could be counted on for any measure of help. No sooner had they climbed down from the roof to bid their farewells than Stone began nursing his jug of whiskey and ordering his wife about like a dog.
“Drink ruins a man,” Josiah had remarked as he and Aaron had made their way home through the woods in the dimming light. “And God didn’t give some men much to ruin in the first place.”
Aaron knew then that his father didn’t think highly of Isaac Stone. But Aaron also knew his father would continue to be neighborly despite his low opinion of the man. It was his father’s way to be charitable to every man and leave judgments to the Almighty.
This, however, was not the way of Aaron’s mother.
Aaron’s mother, Julia Harper, was waiting for her men when they stepped into the house that evening and took their places at the supper table.
“Well, you’re home at last,” she said shortly as she laid a trencher of salted pork before them. “I was beginning to wonder if you hadn’t raised an entire cabin and fashioned the Stones some furniture in the bargain.”
In the yellow glow of the tallow candles, Julia Harper’s mouth looked tight and disapproving, for it was her opinion that her husband and only son had more profitable ways to employ their time, especially in early June when a farmer’s work was never ending. Julia was a woman of medium height, with deep-set eyes of steely blue and smooth auburn hair threaded abundantly with silver. In her youth she had been slim as a whip, but time and childbearing had thickened her frame. She was nearing fifty now, and still sturdy and capable, but her shoulders stooped slightly and the lines around her stern mouth were deepening with each passing year.
Josiah reached for a hunk of salted pork and ignored his wife’s remark. After more than two decades of marriage he was immune to the occasional sting of her sharp tongue.
“Three young misses will be snug as bugs tonight when it rains,” was all he said, and Julia’s lips pursed tighter as she slathered butter on a slice of bread and handed it to her husband.
Aaron thought of his mother as being like a walnut—hard as rock on the surface but surprisingly tender if you could manage to crack the tough shell. It was his father who usually knew how to soften her, and Josiah’s calculated remark about sheltering young girls from rainstorms had served its purpose and pricked at Julia’s conscience.
Julia sighed loudly.
“Well, I suppose if you hadn’t have seen to it, they would have been living that way ‘til the first frost,” she acknowledged. “Esther Henderson said last week her husband found Isaac Stone passed out drunk outside Black Horse Tavern.”
“He likes his drink, indeed he does,” Josiah agreed, “But Esther Henderson ought to know it’s just as much of a sin to spread gossip as it is to indulge in whiskey.”
The indirect rebuke further curtailed Julia, who was a devoutly god-fearing woman, despite her tendencies toward haughty self-righteousness. Aaron always marveled at the way his father could so mildly put his mother in her place. Aaron was accustomed to spirited women. His older sister, Marietta, was a miniature of his mother, and he had been tolerating Marietta’s bossy nonsense since he’d cut his first teeth.
Petite and plump with auburn hair and a creamy complexion, Marietta was seated next to Aaron now, fairly bursting with impatience for the opportunity to ask questions about the Stone family. Marietta, who was past twenty and without a beau, harbored a particular curiosity about any new settlers that arrived in Prosperity Creek, for she sorely wanted a husband.
“No sons at all, Poppa?” Marietta asked, her brown eyes intent. “How old did you say the girls are?”
“Younger than you, my dear,” Josiah said, and then added slyly, “But one of them’s old enough to go courtin’.”
Josiah spoke the last words with emphasis, and Aaron knew his father was teasing him again. The boy trained his blue eyes on his plate and pretended not to hear.
“Somebody nearly rolled off the ridgepole trying to sneak looks at her,” Josiah added before taking a bite of bread.
Julia’s mouth soured again, and she shot a distasteful look at her only son.
“Well, if you ask me, the Stones are best kept at a distance even if they’ll be living close by. Drunkards are wicked. The Bible says to not even eat with one. ‘Can a man carry fire next to his chest and clothes and not be burned?’ ” Julia declared, quoting from Proverbs.
“Hate the sin but be merciful to the sinner, my dear wife,” Josiah reminded.
Before Julia could retort a rumble of thunder echoed in the distance as if God himself were siding with Josiah.
“I knew rain was coming,” Josiah said. “I will see to the animals before the clouds burst.” Josiah rose from the table, stretched his stout back and ran a hand through his thick, yellow hair. Unlike most men his age, he still had a head of wavy hair that grew lustrously around his sunburned temples. At times, with his twinkling eyes and jokes, he reminded Aaron of a mischievous boy, for he remained youthful and vigorous, cheerful and determined despite his fifty years, years which had not been bereft of hardship.
“Aaron, my boy, I could use your help,” Josiah said, clapping a hand on his son’s shoulder, and Aaron shoved a last bite of salted pork into his mouth and rose to his feet. The thunder was growing louder in the distance, and it seemed they were in for not only some rain but also a storm.
As Aaron stepped into the June evening and followed his father to the barn, he thought of Isaac Stone’s cabin and pictured the girl called Limery and her mother and sisters safe and dry beneath the new roof. He hoped that one day soon Isaac Stone would stay sober long enough to fashion a door for the cabin’s entry. The tattered quilt that hung there now was a flimsy barrier between the snug, fire-lit world of logs and chinking and the dark, wild world of lurking forest beasts. And it was Aaron’s opinion that a girl like Limery should sleep in the finest house, on the finest featherbed, with nothing to plague her mind with worry or fear as she lay her pretty head down and drifted into slumber.
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