Short Synopsis: Shaken by a devastating car wreck and subsequent exodus by his girlfriend, Wil Wright spends his time building a home while rehabilitating his limbs in the Ozarks of Missouri. The most difficult injury to heal--his brain--is compromised when his peaceful surroundings are disrupted by a space craft that crashes into his hilly landscape. One of the aliens-Goldn-leaves him breathless and confused, particularly because she closely resembles his previous girlfriend--who suddenly wishes to return to their former relationship. Fate--already decided by earlier events in the Universe--and the friendship of the doctor who saves his life--brings Wil back to health, and sets the stage for the fulfillment of someone else's promises.

CHAPTER ONE 

William Wright removed a floppy straw hat to wipe sweat from a sunburnished face. The scar, spreading from cheekbone to hairline--white in contrast--prickled with tenderness. Brown, heat-baked fingers raked through black, coarse hair, disbursing the perspiration to each strand, cooling as it dried in the wind. Despite sporadic moments of vertigo, and bouts of blinding headaches, the sheer freedom he now felt away from the hospital, away from physical therapy, brought the level in his life back to plumb.

High atop his own personal mountain, pewter-colored eyes automatically panned the scenery from left to right; one hundred and eighty degrees of tree-covered rolling hills, sweeping down to water-filled hollows, climbing back through a forest to the horizon, disappearing in the heat-generated mists. The Ozarks of Missouri. Home.

The twins interrupted his thoughts by barking in unison. When he had heard the woman on the local radio station, he called her on the spot.'Their mother was a collie and their dad was a traveling salesman,' she had proclaimed in a high-pitched, slow-moving drawl. He had to have them both; dogs with a mystery!

"What are you boys chasing over there? If it's another mole, you can have it, but I remind you to leave the opossums alone."

His voice sounded rough and unused--gravel swirling in a gold pan.