Line of Ascent

Life is good for Tom Bluford until he and his family attend a church convention in Denver, Colorado, and visit the old mining town of Leadville. There, his path crosses that of an unknown spirit. Tom’s strong Christian beliefs would never admit to the existence of ghosts, ogres, or vampires. On the other hand, for him, Satan is a very real entity.
Back home, in Rossville, Georgia, he begins to experience strange dreams and visions that disrupt his family and cast doubts upon his faith. Inexorably, he is drawn back to Leadville and his meeting with the persecuting spirit that threatens his soul. When he begins to research his line of descent in an effort to confront the demon, it never occurs to him that a line runs in both directions. He has no idea that someone, or something, is running a line of ascent. As he traces his ancestry and learns the identity of the demon, he is drawn helplessly from the comforts of his twentieth century home into the last hellish days of the Confederacy. He experiences the defeat, misery, and desperation of a depraved deserter on the run. From a ravaged Southland, west, to the gold fields of Colorado, Tom unravels his genealogy as no one else ever has—by experience. The two antagonist rush toward a confrontation—a confrontation that promises to end in either the culmination of Tom’s dreams or the damnation of his soul.