Consequential Secrets

Out of the heart land of Pennsylvania and its coal fields, came the secrets and indiscretions that gripped the heart of James Roster. They were the kind of secrets that tugs at your heart and won't let go. First, were the surprising circumstances of his birth, which he did not find out about until he was twenty years of age. It was the kind of secrets that changed all he was and all he hoped to be. This first secret left him with a bitterness that he could not rid himself of. Yet he had to live close up and personal with the secret, and those who were perpetrating the secret, as well as all of the lies that went along with the secret.


One Saturday nigh in June, when he was taking part in a friendly gambling game, he was struck with a second even more devastating secret. A deceptive secret that no man should ever have to hear. This second and very consequential secret came out of the drunken mouth of Slim, a man he had thought of as his friend. Slim had shouted the secret out at a gambling game; in front of a group of their male friends. The orchestration of this second secret had been so deceptive, that to James it was unbelievable. At first James did refused to believe what Slim had said, but it was shortly proven to be true. This second secret could very well destroy his family unit. It involved his daughter, Valetta and his wife, Maretta the two loves of his life.

Things were hanging on a slender thread. How could it be, that this child that he had loved with an undying love since he had first set eyes on her eighteen long years ago, was neither his or his wife's child. James and his family struggled hard to find a way to put the pieces of their lives together and have some sort of equilibrium. His daughter, Valletta, had taken off in search of her identity. His wife, who had been waiting eighteen long years for James to one day find out about her most unusual deception, was devastated.

Isaiah Mosley, a wealthy white man, who was part owner of the coal