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| Christmas in Clear Creek |
Here's a an excerpt from the book...
Clear Creek, Oregon Territory, November 28th, 1858
Bowen Drake had a gift. Unfortunately, he didn’t want it.
Not that it was a bad gift, mind you – most would say it was in fact a very good gift, even a great one. But it hadn’t served Bowen in the manner in which he’d hoped, and had left him wandering for years as a lost soul, looking for someplace to belong. Though it didn’t help that he’d been looking in all the wrong places – on purpose.
What drives a man to want to be bad?
Well, Bowen had his reasons. He and his father didn’t get along well anymore, owing to Bowen blaming him for his mother’s death. After all, if Franklin Drake M.D., a prominent Philadelphia physician, hadn’t been out treating and saving everyone and their grandmother from influenza in the winter of ‘48, then perhaps he’d have had time to save his own wife (and Bowen’s mother) from the disease. But no, Doc Drake was never home to help her – too busy being a hero to the city.
To compound the problem, Mrs. Drake’s death was as hard on the doctor as it was on Bowen. Dr. Drake took to drinking to cope with the loss – and perhaps his own guilt – which led Bowen to take to leaving. Bowen was greatly gifted in the area of healing, some said divinely so. But the break between father and son had been dramatic, and traumatic.
How could the man preach to others to turn away from the evils of drink, Bowen asked himself, only to destroy his own body with it every night? How could he prescribe that cleanliness was next to Godliness when he himself stunk to high heaven for lack of bathing? How could he admonish others to take care of what they had, when he had squandered everything he had since Bowen’s mother died? “Physician, heal thyself” indeed!
And it wasn’t just his father who’d set a bad example. In the process of staying away from his father, he’d spent even more time at school – specifically Harvard University – learning medicine under the tutelage of Drs. George Parkman and John Webster, famous physicians in their own right. So imagine his shock on a morning in November 1849 when he first heard the news that Parkman, who’d almost become a substitute father to him, had disappeared … and then on Thanksgiving Day, watching the police haul away his mentor Webster after charging him with Parkman’s murder.
Webster had, indeed, murdered Parkman, after Parkman had demanded Webster pay back some money he owed him. Two great medical men, one dead, the other to be hanged the following year, and all over what? A handful of cash. The scandal made national headlines, and tore apart the city of Boston and the town of Cambridge, where Harvard sat. But it did just as much damage to the heart of the young medical student Bowen Drake.
So while young Bowen did eventually complete his medical studies and earn his M.D. degree – with highest honors, for what little that was worth – he had already rejected even the possibility of practicing medicine. As far as he was concerned, doctoring was nothing but a joke upheld by hypocrites of the worst sort, such as his own father and the late, unlamented John Webster. This son would not be following in his father’s footsteps; the student would not pursue the calling of his teachers.
Instead, he’d decided to give his father (and peripherally, his professors) a good dose of his own medicine and do the opposite of everything his father wanted. Maybe that would shock him into reality. Maybe he’d return to being the man he was before the death of Mary Drake, the beloved wife and mother he’d abandoned to the grave.
So after graduation, Bowen took to drinking just like his father. He soon found his sensitive stomach wouldn’t last, so he gave it up – but let his father think he hadn’t. Games of chance were another option, but after a few weeks in the various gambling hells of the area, he found himself growing bored, not to mention insolvent.
Instead of finding a nice respectable girl to marry, he tried womanizing, but that was even more disastrous. The women kept leaving before Bowen had the chance to break their hearts. Worse yet, they all seemed to wind up with someone perfect for them, get married, and live happily ever after – all while thanking him for his superb matchmaking skills. As far as he knew, he had none – he’d just happen to mention a gentleman he knew, drop a name, and like magic they would show up in town. They’d meet, and off she went. So that was a dead end.
Clearly, he would have to try harder to disappoint his father, punish him for letting his mother die. He hit upon the idea of seeking company of the acutely undesirable – surely that would be enough!
Unfortunately, Bowen’s gift for doing good followed him. He headed west and joined an outlaw gang, but within two weeks of joining, half of them came down with a bad case of “the guilts” and turned themselves in! The other half were none too happy to have to disband to save their hides from their blabber-mouthed ex-partners, and correctly blamed Bowen for their plight.
It didn’t stop there. He joined another gang and, while trying to rob a train, saved a baby instead. This did nothing to improve his already damaged image in the outlaw world. Nonetheless, Bowen found another gang to hook up with … but within a month managed to get them all arrested during a stagecoach robbery in which he appeared to save the stagecoach drivers and passengers (one of which was the niece of the owner of the stage line). He even got an honorary mention in the local gazette for his “heroism.”
Now brought even lower – and decidedly persona non grata in the criminal community – he figured it couldn’t get any worse if he pursued crime as a solo career. Wrong again. His one attempt to rob a bank went awry due to a wagon he’d set aflame as a distraction. Because of a shift in the wind, the local gambling house caught on fire as well, and he wound up on the fire brigade along with everyone else in town. The gambling hell was destroyed, which was a darn shame for the gamblers, but the local Ladies’ Society for Godly Living rejoiced that their prayers had been answered and their husbands were now home at night.
So that’s where things sat on the third-to-last day of November, the year of Our Lord 1858. Bowen James Drake: frustrated, depressed, unsuccessful at outlawry, with no prospects, no place to go, very few resources and nothing to belong to, not even an outlaw gang.
And to make things worse, he’d heard from an acquaintance back home. Turns out his father had been
elated every time he found out about Bowen’s heroic exploits – and not only did he let everyone in Philadelphia society know about them, he would get stinking drunk to celebrate. Some of his professors at Harvard, the same ones who had claimed Webster’s innocence even as the murderer was led to the gallows, were bragging about their former charge as well.
He’d run as far as he could, as far west as possible to get away from his hypocritical father and the horrendous loss of his mother, from the profession he’d grown to loathe. But he couldn’t get away from his special gift, no matter how much he hated it, no matter how little he cared whether he lived or died. Things always worked out for the better where others were concerned when in his company … but they never seemed to work out for him.
He still hated his father for letting his mother die.
He still thought his father was a horrible hypocrite.
He thought medicine was a dodge for charlatans and the two-faced.
He still didn’t want anything to do with doctoring as a lifelong vocation.
And he still, just once, would like to see something go wrong with everything around him just to let himself know he was “normal,” because at this point he was beginning to feel like a freak of nature. He actually even said to pray for it to come about.
Obviously, no one had told Bowen the old saying, “be careful what you pray for.” Or he just hadn’t listened.
A Character I Still Love
Doc Drake remains one of my favorite characters to write. He wants so badly to be the villain of his own story—grim, dangerous, untouchable—but his God-given gift for healing refuses to cooperate.
And Clear Creek?
Well… it has a way of softening even the hardest shells.
A town Christmas play, a community that welcomes him, and a heroine who sees straight through his scowl all combine to turn Doc Drake’s life upside down in the best possible way. And when his old gang catches up to him, Bowen has a chance to redeem what little bad he did manage to pull off, and do something good.
Every December, I find myself thinking back on him—his stubborn heart, his reluctant goodness, and the way Clear Creek embraced him long before he was ready to embrace himself.
Wishing You a Beautiful Start to the Season
As we move into the Christmas season, I hope Bowen Drake's unlikely journey brings you a smile. Whether you’re revisiting Christmas in Clear Creek or discovering it for the first time, may it bring warmth, laughter, and a touch of frontier holiday joy.
You can find Christmas in Clear Creek here:
Merry Christmas,
Kit Morgan
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