Gentle Spirits

A story of generations, Gentle Spirits follows Samuel and Angelique through the splendor of nature, as they navigate the challenges of growing into an adult world full of uncertainty. With each step, they search for meaning in the great circle of life, finally understanding that as long as a soul remains in memory, a spirit never dies.

Samuel’s mother dies giving birth. His father, Firestone, raises Samuel alone, teaching him the peace of fishing and the joy of fresh dirt in his hands while tending vinifera on a small farm in the hills of Northern Michigan. Seasonally, father and son travel to the Georgia coast, where Samuel learns to swim and sail the Atlantic off St. Simons Island.

As a young girl, Angelique loses her father of Irish descent to the perils of sailing the Caribbean Sea. Marie, her native Carib mother, carries her to safety amongst the wild horses on Cumberland Island in post WWII Georgia.
In the wake of a hurricane, Angelique finds Samuel barely alive on a Cumberland Island beach. The unlikely couple grow together through adolescence on the barrier Islands off the Georgia coast, and the streams and forests of Northern Michigan. Societal pressures of the late 1960’s, and the turmoil of the Vietnam War force a separation, though a seed has been cast.

Samuel embarks upon a life journey, and like his father many years before, finds serenity in the natural world, and a deeper meaning in the aura of a mountain in the Black Hills.

Journey with Samuel and Angelique and experience the grace of dolphins and wild horses on Cumberland Island; birds, dogs, butterflies, brook trout, and grapevines in Northern Michigan; trout-fishing in Spearfish Canyon; dogs and sheep on a Montana ranch; breathtaking duck migrations in the Canadian Provinces – and majestic hawks and a mountain bluebird on Bear Butte.