God Made the Genegantslet

1995 was the snowiest winter ever recorded in Shunderland. The accumulation added up to a deadly Easter weekend for my family. It was a flash flood, fed by rapid snow melt. I was a leaf without fear of the storm.

Our family cabin sat on the Genegantslet [jenny-ganslet] and there was no escape. I lost my wife, and both of my children. Still, I might have seen it coming.

The snow threatened my progress at the magazine. I was a photographer and writer. I just started a year-long project - The towns of Shunderland - across the land and across the seasons. The kind of work I lived for!

Or so I thought.

Instead of finding fulfillment I found struggle, not only against the weather, but artistically, and most of all, against the God my wife was always going on about.

“You know those pictures you take, the scenery, the animals? God Made all of that.”

Every click of my camera testified to those words, like subtle signs calling me to God. There were other signs too–they ought to have been grappled with, but I pressed on like a man against a storm, searching for the perfect photo, until the water rose up and took them away.

Now I live fitfully in this house above the Genegantslet.

My friend came to take me on a trip we planned all those years ago, and I can't help but recount that Easter in 1995, and the snowy months that led up to it.

I see now, in hindsight, the signs I missed. But how can I draw near after coming to the understanding God Made the Genegantslet?

God Made the Genegantslet is a succinct, gut-wrenching, Christian Fiction novella of about 28,000 words, written in first person with a somber tone and the weight of deep, deep snow.