Michael Neil

Trees in the Mist: Discovering a family tree and a story hidden in the mist of time. Michael Neil

Trees in the Mist is a five-part novel about a family line that begins with the young man, John Dowling, coming to America in the mid-1700s bringing his father's flintlock musket. He finds himself along the northern coast of Maine where he meets up with a man, Samuel Bryant, who takes a liking to the boy and invites him to stay with his family. What ensues is a love story surrounding the revolutionary war and the fight for freedom. The town of Machias, Maine is a hotbed of the Son's of Liberty. The story follows John Dowling and Margaret Bryant, and their son's children and grandchildren for a hundred and fifty years to the early 1900s with Edwin Dowling and Lucy Cook. Both were born in Whiting, Maine, but Lucy's family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts. Edwin's neighbor encourages him to go find her sister's daughter in Lowell.



This novel is about the adventures of life, love, and loss, happiness, sadness, hopes and dreams, tragedy and triumph. It makes the dash on a headstone between the dates born and died come to life. Mike Neil says. "Writing a novel is like time travel and meeting your characters and coming to know them. Reading the novel should do that for the reader as well." The story is linked by the flintlock musket that is handed down through the generations. Edwin convinces Lucy that he needs to come west to Oregon to find a better life. Lucy has to travel across the country on the transcontinental railroad with her four children including a six-month-old baby. Edwin's brother had sent a letter that his salary of one dollar a day working in the woods would be doubled. Edwin had left six months earlier and taken his four-year-old daughter, Louisa, with him.



This is an American story that could belong to anyone. Just maybe it will inspire you to clear the mist in your own story. It is hard to know where you are going unless you know where you have been, and where you came from.