Across the Crying Sands

Mary Edwards is only a teenager, but she is convinced that sailing into marriage with John Gerritse will be a great adventure. Sometimes, though, it seems as if they are going to sea in a sieve, just like the Jumblies in her favorite Edward Lear poem. Oregon Territory along the Pacific coastline in 1888 seems just the place for dreamers like Mary and John, although both underestimate the backbreaking labor it will take to carve out a homestead of their own on land that the government has snatched from Indigenous peoples. No matter that a road to the coast does not yet exist, Mary and John know that they can help make Cannon Beach a tourist destination. Side characters such as a Nehalem Clatsop woman named Jewell and an English remittance man named Herbie bring both risk and reward into the couple’s lives.