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My husband believes and I have come to believe, too. that where you live has a great deal to do with who you are and who you become. I don't mean the house only. I mean the natural surroundings, the land, the weather, all of it. My mother came from a beautiful but rather primitive natural world full of superstition and ignorance, and yet she was able to overcome that and even to hold her own with the wealthiest, most spoiled people you can imagine. But perhaps she was like the land on which she was born and lived her early life: relentless. unyielding.

What eventually happened to her and my father is very tragic--so tragic I cannot even get myself to describe it to you here. It's something you will read and learn yourself.

However, if there was one thing my mother taught me, it was how to contend with difficulties, how to escape from the grip of defeat, and how to find a rainbow after a storm. She was never depressed and cynical with me, and she was always encouraging and inspirational.

I am, of course, looking forward to reading the rest of your story, but I hope that if you have the time, you will sit down and read about my family, too.

Perhaps someday we will meet and have a cup of coffee. In the end. I believe, you-- like I-- will rejoice in life and its blessings.

My real father was always afraid I would inherit his penchant for melancholy. When we met for the first time as father and daughter, he told me there was so much of my mother in me that he believed what I had of her would be strong enough to overcome any melancholy I had inherited from him. He was very happy about that.

I think you will learn someday that you have inherited your real father's wisdom and compassion and that will help you overcome the dark forces that are so happy to do us harm.

In that way as in so many others, we are truly like sisters.

Annie Casteel