Frontier Road - Short Stories (written by humans)

Start with the end. Just how the story of Moses is given to us. Not in triumph or resolution, but in a passage of scripture so abrupt and unadorned that it invites suspicion. Here is Deuteronomy 34: “And Moses went up from the plains of Moab unto the mountain of Nebo… And the Lord shewed him all the land… And the Lord said unto him, This is the land which I sware unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto...

This version of  Anna Karenina  was created in 2020 well before the advent of artificial intelligence. It was translated and thoughtfully modernized by a human hand, with the goal of preserving Tolstoy’s original prose while making the language and pacing more accessible to today’s reader. Leo Tolstoy stands as one of the greatest voices in Russian literature. Born into aristocracy, he dropped out...

Part 1 of the Short Story Series, Dear Moses “And the woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.” — Exodus 2:2–3 I killed for Pharaoh. Not just...

Napoleon didn’t invade Spain. Not at first. He came in through the back, through Portugal; quickly, quietly, and with hardly a shot fired. By the fall of 1807, France and Spain had signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau, supposedly agreeing to carve up Portugal between them. The French would march in from the north and center. The Spanish would help from the sides. On paper, it was about punishing Por...

What Shakespeare Taught us about Life and Death In the spring of 1616, William Shakespeare returned to his hometown of Stratford-upon-Avon for good. He was fifty-two years old and, by outward appearance, in decent health. He had already written his final play. The London stages had gone quiet. His daughters were grown, one of them newly married. He had signed his will a few weeks earlier, and two...

Columbus died on May 20, 1506, in Valladolid, Spain. He was 54 years old, broken by illness, debt, and the weight of unfulfilled promises. The years of ocean voyages, brutal weather, and battle with both nature and men had left his body twisted with arthritis and his spirit worn thin. Once the toast of Europe, he spent his last months largely ignored, left to draft long, pleading letters to a roya...

After returning from his second voyage, Columbus finds his reputation damaged, his colony in chaos, and growing resistance from both colonists and native people. He tries to hold things together, but the settlers are frustrated with the lack of gold, and the natives are sick of mistreatment and broken promises. As rebellion brews, Columbus uses harsh measures to control the island and ship Indigen...

In part 3 the narrative follows Christopher Columbus as he steps ashore on the islands he believed were the outer reaches of Asia. Planting the royal banners of Castile, he took possession in the name of Ferdinand and Isabella, declaring to all present, “I took possession before all others, as in fact I did take possession of the said island for the king and the queen, my lord and lady.” The indig...

Christopher Columbus is in Lisbon in 1473, a young Genoese sailor growing used to Portugal’s capital. He tries to reconcile his past mistakes, praying for a sign. Again and again, he hears the same words: “God called you and you are justified.” Columbus first meets Filipa, the daughter of a Portuguese navigator. Their marriage is simple but rooted in respect, and soon Columbus finds a sense of bel...

In this first episode of Cristoforo Columbo: Admiral of the Sea , we find Columbus in 1504, alone and retired in Valladolid. He walks with a limp through the stone streets, worn down by years at sea and a lifetime of battles, carrying the guilt of what he calls “sins of my hands.” Despite his prayers at the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Sea, the silence there only sharpens his sense of failure. “...

The following story is adapted from a chapter called The Son in Hermann Hesse’s 1922 novel Siddhartha. Born in Germany in 1877, Hesse was the son of Protestant missionaries and shaped by questions of identity, rebellion, and the tension between spiritual ideals and real-world suffering. Like many of his works, Siddhartha draws from Eastern philosophy and Hesse’s own struggles with alienation and f...

“By the Waters of Babylon”  is a short story written by Stephen Vincent Benét and first published in 1937. It’s a post-apocalyptic tale that explores themes of knowledge, truth, and the rise and fall of civilizations. The story is told from the point of view of  John , a young man from a tribal society that lives in a future, post-apocalyptic world. His people have strict religious rules, includin...

Prologue: *Jack London first wrote this short story in 1902 for a younger crowd, giving it a safer, more hopeful ending where the man survives. But six years later, he rewrote it, sharper, colder, and truer to what he had seen during his time in the Yukon.   Jack London spent time in the Yukon during the gold rush, and he knew cold like most people never will. Locals gave him advice, passed down f...

In the winter of 1840, Matthew L. Davis (journalist and longtime confidant of Aaron Burr) attends a private discourse in Washington, D.C., where he hears Mormon founder Joseph Smith speak. Initially skeptical, Davis is struck by Smith’s sincerity and calm demeanor. Drawing on his past defense of misunderstood figures like Burr, Davis writes to his wife expressing a surprising change of heart.

* Pre-Script to  Editha , a Short Story A recent report estimates that 1 in every 31 young Russian men is a casualty of war. In under three years, Russia has lost nearly one million soldiers. One million lives—sons, brothers, friends—sacrificed for what? Who will stop this madness? Who will end the senseless slaughter of an entire generation? These weren’t just victims of Putin’s war. They were vi...

In this final episode of The Beardless Jesus series, Professor Buck faces his excommunication hearing and learns the results of a decision that was already set in motion long before he entered that room. After two and a half hours of questioning, debate, and measured responses, he makes one last plea—not for himself, but for the integrity of faith itself. He lays out the history, the art, and the...

As Professor Buck faces his looming excommunication, he reflects on his spiritual isolation, feeling abandoned by the community he once called home. He wrestles with anger, questioning whether his lifelong loyalty to the church was worth it, while finding solace in literature and academia. Meanwhile, his students, particularly Scarlett, grapple with their own conflicts—caught between loyalty to th...

Professor Buck is about to face a disciplinary hearing for his perceived apostasy from the Church. He’s calm, though, and even attending Sunday meetings with President Brown—the Church leader overseeing the hearing—in hopes of resolving things. The issue has stirred up public opinion, with some defending Buck and others wanting him excommunicated. When Buck meets President Brown, the conversation...

A continuation of The Beardless Jesus Series: In a Yale Religious Philosophy Class, Professor Steven Buck lectures on repentance and the evolution of Jesus's image in early Christianity. During class, an older student named Jim Hunt delivers a compelling critique of Facebook/Meta and modern control of perception. Buck connects this to the Greek concept of metanoia (repentance) - changing one's min...

Welcome to Part 2 of the Beardless Jesus. In this episode we continue the exploration of the controversial world of Professor Buck, the Yale academic challenging traditional Mormon perspectives with his groundbreaking lecture series and bestselling book "The Beardless Jesus". We follow Scarlett as her faith journey unfolds, grappling with intriguing questions: Did Jesus have a beard? And more impo...

When Scarlett attends a lecture by the unconventional Professor Buck, she’s challenged to reconsider long-held views on biblical teachings, cultural practices, and her own religious upbringing. Along the way, she discovers that her professor was actually a Mormon missionary, long ago, who served with her grandpa. As she considers new ideas she faces the internal conflict of a loss of certainty. Sa...

Rather than celebrating the wonders of the journey, The Journey of the Magi presents it as an arduous and painful experience. The poem opens with five lines adapted from a passage in the Nativity Sermon delivered by Lancelot Andrewes, the Bishop of Winchester, to King James I on Christmas Day, 1622. Andrewes’ original text reads: “A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the wor...

“When I undertook to write a memoir of the late Empress of Austria, I was fully aware of the great difficulties I should encounter, especially as the material I had collected from various quarters was enormous, and I felt it to be my duty to sift it thoroughly and to select only such parts as I could myself believe to be authentic. I have personally had the happiness of meeting the illustrious lad...

It was said in 1896 about this poem that it "reaches the ear and holds it, and through it touches the heart. About the author Yeats it was said: "There is no younger poet of our time in whose future fame one may feel a stronger faith." The poet found inspiration in Thoreau’s life, particularly his solitary experience at Walden Pond. Just imagining that isolation helped the poet escape his homesick...

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of li...