The Unbroken Circle
The Lost Journey
The Implant

The Road Least Taken: Journey Into Self

     The Unbroken Circle

     An untold tale of Native Americans coming East to take back their sacred lands in 1832. From part of the tribe’s ancient treasure, they have gold to purchase the land.

     President Andrew Jackson's new Indian Removal Act is in force and Indians are being driven west of the Mississippi River. Oddly, however, this tribe of Chattanock are being told they can return east by the President's staff. Returning is Shadow Dancer, who is the twin of Shaun McCairn, a young boy struggling to grow into a man in Fair Hope Valley in Western Pennsylvania. Separated while very young, neither brother is aware the other is alive because a flood swept one away when the Chattanock first exited their valley fifteen years earlier. Now, almost daily, one must suffer the scorn of the father after being blamed for the brother's death. The other has no memory of a White Skin brother.

     White Skins lay claim to the Pennsylvania valley and are not willing to give up land where some of their own families are now buried. However, someone connected to President Jackson's office has sanctioned the return and ordered the settlers off the land. In charge of the exchange is an Indian hating cavalry general who teams up with Damon Justice, a known Indian Fighter. Once the Chattanock's gold is lost, war appears the only remaining option.

Could the Chattanock's return have something to do with the fact that Jackson is seeking a second term as president?

Then why has a Cavalry General, who is known to be an Indian hater, been selected to oversee the transaction?


The McCairn family lost a son to the Indians fifteen years earlier. Could they now lose the remaining son and daughter?

Damon Justice is out to get the remaining ancient Chattanock treasure which he is sure lies somewhere in Fair Hope Valley.

Read the novel and find out. Agents and Editors: Contact me at jcassell2003@comcast.net to discuss publishing the novel.

Click here to read excerpts from:
The Unbroken Circle  
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The Lost Journey

(Sequel to the Unbroken Circle)  

     The settlers of Fair Hope Valley disperse. The McCairn family is among those who point their wagons toward Oregon. They look to a new start elsewhere. One son, Shaun, stays behind to be among the Chattanock tribe . . . and be near Moon Dust. Because of her circumstances, Moon Dust feels a closeness to the memory of Shadow Dancer and cannot attend to Shaun.
    A captive Cherokee woman, Singing Flower, escapes from Man-Who-Stalks-Until-The-Kill, a Tuscarora chief who was among those attacking the settlers in Fair Hope Valley.  Singing Flower finds a young warrior on the trial. The warrior has sustained a head injury and does not know his identity.  The two begin a courseless journey, one escaping who she has been the other seeking to escape his maddening obscurity. 
    After losing their means for making a new start, the McCairns soon find themselves running from the law, John McCairn near death, and Priscilla and her daughter, Rebecca, driving their wagon toward what they hope is Texas.
    Now, the couple e
scaping from the relentless Man Stalker are on a confused, lost journey.  The McCairn's desperate journey is more away from than toward.  Shaun McCairn is left wandering around The Valley of Circling Waters where a war minded Chief rules.  Moon Dust soon faces a personal journey inward to resolve a conflict in which her peaceful nature comes up against a crises facing her people.

Will the entire McCairn family make it to Texas with Priscilla and her daughter, Rebecca, driving the team of horses in their one wagon caravan?

Will Wounded Warrior and his new companion escape the relentlessly pursing Man Stalker?  Why does fate put them on a collision course with the McCairns?

What turn of fortune awaits the Chattanock in their valley with warlike, Chief Young Horse in command?  If called upon, could the daughter of a chief rule the tribe and keep them out of harm's way?

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 The Implant

      Marshall Winchester, the son of a popular U.S. Senator,was born deaf but has had a cochlear implant since the earliest time one could be implanted. His father, Franklin, grooms Marshall for the Presidency, trying all the while to conceal Marshall's deafness.  Franklin reasons the public just would not accept a deaf president.
   Franklin struggles to conceal a dark secret from the public.  Since his wife was unable to conceive a child, he attempted to acquire a son through devious but not illegal means.  Franklin finds out too late the baby was abducted.  Now he is trapped into trying to forever conceal the boy's identity. 
     Marissa, deaf since birth, grows up in the deaf culture with her parents.  Through what she believes is very fortunate circumstances, Marissa attends and graduates from Harvard University then comes into Marshall's life as he embarks on his pursuit of the Presidency. 
The relationship is conflicted with Marshall's attention to his campaign and a mysterious reservation on both their parts.
    D
evlin Drummond, a former Deputy Director of the CIA, learns of the implant and masterminds a scheme to use 2015 technology to control Marshall through the implant. Drummond sees to it that he becomes Marshall's Vice President.  Now, he has the means to become the most powerful person in the world.

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The Road Least Taken: A Journey Into Self

     The Journey Into Self project is reminiscent of Hugh Prather’s published work on Notes to Myself.  The present book of thoughts is a pathway leading to self-exploration but it is a journey into self-understanding. However, this self-understanding is not a place where the real you can stop and reside for the days to come because you cannot stay at a place that has no real boundaries. Thus begins the adventure that is a sojourn from where you are and from which the "you" that is now reading this will never return.
     Each time as I searched within myself for the pathway to this self-understanding and explored what I found there, I was guided by two questions:
      (1) "Could these same feelings, thoughts, and experiences be something others have wondered about also?
      (2) Could someone else explore with me these kinds of things and at the same time find their own answers to puzzling questions that are only half asked?"
      A third question was born out of the union of the first two. That question became, "Can we, together, touch our secret feelings and commitments as the journey to self-exploration wanders through such pristine, almost virgin parts of us?"
      Come with me, join me in this journey as we put words to our subtle feelings, intense feelings, puzzling feelings. Take the words or thoughts you might find here and use them as a key to unlock captured, almost hidden, parts of you that you may have been uncomfortable with, that you may have been unaware of before, or parts at which you have even feared to look. Take an attitude of "it is just you and me now," together, sharing words, maybe thoughts, possibly even feelings.
      There is extensive use of the "I" in this book. Where it is possible, substitute your own "I" for the "I" you find here. You will be able to hear the message just a little more clearly that way.
      It is my hope that understanding oneself is always an exciting journey fueled by the furor of searching and the delightful "finds" from exploring within. The journey to self-understanding is always the most enigmatical of mysteries that forever goes unsolved, and we are happy that it is so.
     This book is written in a style of brief thoughts on short lines. This is not a book of poetry, unless life itself is the greatest poem of all that is written by our thoughts and emotions or memories which we have fully forgotten, only to be thought again with a warm aura that causes us to wish to draw up such pleasant things and visit them time and again through such magical verse.
      One problem of this journey is that most of us do not have a guide to lead us through such uncharted parts of ourselves. It is my fondest hope that in some way the words you find here will help you begin to touch and release into a new freedom much of the real you that languishes somewhere within so unfulfilled, so incomplete. In any case, remember what you do find here can only be a beginning, not a conclusion to a thorough search and exploration of who you really are. Accept this as a beginning of your journey and you will find the excitement of the hunt goes on and on. Your "finds" will give you years of quite pleasure in your firefly evenings and fresh dewed mornings.

Your Companion on a sojourn,
Jack L. Cassell

 Click here for a few first steps on the Journey.  

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