A FIGHT FOR FREEDOM
The farmers of Manitokee County are wholesome folk. They love the land. To them, the earth has its own special sort of soul. Usually practical and good natured, they can cut through malarkey like butter, their stares as sharp as knives, sometimes. But if you prove your worth and trustworthiness, they’ll be loyal to a fault.
They don’t fuss over simple things like fashion. While other parents scroll the latest ads and fret about buying trendy phones or sneakers for their kids, the farmers of Manitokee are scanning their fields, noting the height of the corn or the clouds in the sky, and they worry about rain and frost, if they’ll harvest late that year, and if there will be food on the table come midwinter. For their kids. For all kids.
And if you ask any farmer in all of Manitokee County who best embodies their ideals, they’ll tell you Gordon and his brothers are the hardest working of the bunch. But that would be by a hair. Truth is, they all work hard because everyone watches out for each other. Miguel, Daisy, Jacob, Gage, heck… even Kate. All of them.
Neighbors go from field to field, combining oats or corn, transferring golden harvest from gravity bin to silo, or bailing hay and any remaining straw, stacking it high in bright red barns, with “payment” in beer, brats, new jokes and old stories. It’s always been like that.
So when the sphere dwellers came…
It wasn’t the same for the city.
And maybe the sphere dwellers assumed they’d have the same power and control over clay and trees that they wielded over concrete and skyscrapers. But like I said, the farmers of Manitokee are a different sort of bunch.
They defend their own. Even when “their own” is a deeply missed matron’s scruffy herding dog. Or a girl who, having grown up with that floppy-eared puppy, fired a first shot to save it.
No one could rightly blame Emma for “the incident,” not when they would have done the same. Boyd, her best friend, would challenge anyone to say different. He’d stood by her side for all his life, and he’ll continue to do so for as long as he can fight.
Like I said, they defend their own.
In truth, before “the incident,” the farmers of Manitokee County had hoped for life to go on as it always did. The Peace Planners’ activities had focused on Green City and the lake for months. But there was no denying the one fact that loomed over their neutrality: the sphere dwellers were a hungry species. Emma found that out firsthand.
Cornered into making a stand, Emma and her community will band together and face the changes forced upon them, fight for their home, for their freedom, for their humanity, and ultimately, for their entire world.
Each character in Fear the Sphere has their own story to tell. Each has a past that influences their decisions. You can read more about them on their pages. -TJ