Unending Devotion (Michigan Brides #1)(107)
“I was so miserable, I didn’t think I wanted to live anymore,” Daisy said. “That’s when one of the other girls told me about your home. She said you were giving girls a fresh chance. . . . So I came, but I was too scared to knock on the door. I started walking back down the street, and that’s when I met Connell. . . .”
Daisy fixed her gaze on the floor, on the tip of her boot poking out from underneath her skirt, at the hole in the leather that exposed her bare toe. Her lips trembled and tears pooled in her eyes. “I know I don’t deserve your kindness or help, not after the way I treated you, the way I demanded so much of you and then abandoned you. But . . .”
She lifted her head then, and her eyes pleaded with Lily for a second chance, begged for her forgiveness, and beckoned her to love her again.
The pain pushed a sob out before Lily could stop it, and heartache propelled her across the distance to Daisy. She threw her arms around her sister and crushed her in an embrace that spoke of all the desperation and longing she’d buried.
To her surprise, Daisy flung her arms around her and buried her face against her chest. Sobs wracked the young girl’s sickly body. “Oh, Lily. Oh, Lily. Oh, Lily.”
Lily pressed her face against Daisy and breathed in the sourness of whiskey and cigar smoke and unnamed filth with every choked lungful. She let her tears fall upon the girl, washing her with a love that would never fail, ever. No matter how many times Daisy strayed, no matter how many times she failed, Lily knew she could do nothing less than open her arms to her precious sister.
“I love you, Daisy,” she whispered. “Nothing you do could ever make me stop loving you.”
Daisy’s arms squeezed her tighter.
Lily planted a kiss against the tangled hair. A prayer of gratefulness erupted in her heart—gratefulness for God’s bigger plans, for His higher ways, for His wisdom.
She wouldn’t always be able to see what He was doing, and maybe she wouldn’t always have Daisy in her life. But she would cherish the moments she did have, and know that even if life didn’t always make sense or go the way she wanted, God had opened wide His arms to her.
He was still in control.
And His love would never fail.
Author Note
In the 1870s through the early 1880s, lumbering employed more workers than any other industrial occupation in the United States. The white pine tree was considered “green gold” and netted greater profit than the gold rush of the West.
The lumber era of the north woods brought confidence and prosperity to the Midwest. It helped develop many of the cities in existence today. The era is often glamorized, and many legends, songs, and stories have developed out of the lumber camps and lumber towns. If you were to take a drive through Michigan or Wisconsin, you’d run across museum after museum (some devoted entirely to the logging industry) with excellent depictions of what life was like during the lumber era.
However, often forgotten in all of the lore is the toll that lumbering took not only on the land but also on lives. The philosophy of many lumber barons was to get all they could from the land, as fast as they could, and then to let tomorrow’s people handle tomorrow’s problems. In other words, as they moved their camps from place to place, they left behind barren land, often not even suitable for farming.
Not only did the lumbering industry devastate the land, but it also brought a plethora of moral problems—alcoholism, prostitution, and violence. In fact, the lumber era is credited with introducing white slavery (forced prostitution) into Michigan.
It is my hope in Unending Devotion to bring attention to some of the situations that existed during the lumber era, particularly white slavery, which, unfortunately, is still a problem within the United States (and throughout the world) today.
Harrison was a real town in central Michigan that sprang up during the lumber era. In the early 1880s it had a population of only two thousand people but had over twenty saloons.
James Carr was a real villain who took up residence in Harrison to prey on the shanty boys of the area. He built a two-story saloon and brothel on a hill overlooking the town and named it the Devil’s Ranch Stockade. Every night between fifty and two hundred fifty men visited the Stockade. So many men lost their lives there that eventually the hill outside the Stockade became known as Deadman’s Hill.
When recruitment of prostitutes for his brothel ran low, Carr resorted to procuring women by any means he was able. He kidnapped young women off the streets of Saginaw and Bay City. And he advertised in downstate newspapers for chambermaids and waitresses for his Harrison “hotel.” When unsuspecting young girls arrived in Harrison by train, Maggie, Carr’s lover and whorehouse matron, would meet the girls at the depot and whisk them off to the brothel. Those who objected were beaten into submission. Most of those girls were never heard from again.
One girl did manage to escape from the Stockade. Her name was Jennie King. She was one of the young girls who answered the newspaper ad, expecting to work in Carr’s hotel. Instead, she found herself enslaved at the Stockade. She fled but was recaptured and beaten. The brave and desperate woman escaped again, wearing only a nightgown, and this time gained help from a family in Harrison. Carr tried to get her back, but the family helped smuggle Jennie out of Harrison and to a safe place.
Unfortunately, many girls didn’t survive. Another prostitute named Frankie Osborne was beaten to death by Carr because she refused to dance for the shanty boys. While Frankie’s death went unnoticed by law enforcement, the Clare County newspapers used the event to begin exposing Carr’s evil deeds.