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The Journals of Raymond Brooks 23

CHAPTER I

First Day in Drentwych

I’d like to begin my story with my arrival to Drentwych, a town
in England that immigrants and the unwanted washed into
from whatever life they had left behind. Many hoped that a
fresh start in a new place would alter their fate. That was the

hope my parents held in their hearts when we boarded the ship
that would take us far away to this strange and barbaric land
now called England. As for me, I was too young at the time to
have any clear thoughts regarding the transition.
I reached Drentwych, more than fifty-five years before the
Norman Conquest. Then, it thrived as an immigrant town. I say
‘I’ because my parents became gravely ill during the journey to
England and passed away shortly after our arrival. I was a boy
of eight winters then, freshly orphaned and lost.