Where All Your Attempts Cease: A Novel of Love and Survival on the Oregon Trail

A brand new epic novel from the author of 'Milton and the Morning Monk' and 'The House of Wolves'. The trail doesn't care who you were back home - it only asks what you're willing to become. Two thousand miles of river crossings and mountain passes - and encounters with the Cayuse, Shoshone, Umatilla, Pawnee, and Cheyenne - stand between St. Louis and the Willamette Valley. Where All Your Attempts Cease follows the wagons west in the spring of 1844, tracing what it costs to shed an old life and build a new one from nothing, what it takes to endure the unendurable, and how love survives when everything else is uncertain. It's familiar territory for Robert McDiarmid, who writes about the distance between who we are and who we are willing to become - and the people, places, and hardships that close that gap. All proceeds from his novels and projects are donated to charity.