Project Sapling

When one orphaned teen escapes from a preordained life of drudgery and misery administered as education by enlisting in the Youth Corps of the Unified Army Occult Defense Division in place of serving jail time for a bar-room brawl, his choice sets about a chain of events that will alter the future of humanity. Freed from the violent history left behind the Mission School walls, deployed on the forefront of an ongoing conflict between the continental superpower of the Unified Central States and its neighboring nation-state of Cascadia, War Orphan 027A-R03 finds that the uniform does not fit quite as well as expected. When the opportunity to fight the system from within presents itself, he does not hesitate: When stranded alone on a training mission with no one but a single conscript and captured by an enemy officer, he strikes a deal to save the recruit and begins a decades-long conspiracy to ferry Unified teenagers across the border to a better life over the Cascades.

Decades later, the War Orphan from Colville is now the Headmaster of the Occult Defense Division's Youth Corps. After a few unwise decisions at the beginning of October, not only is his own estranged grandson now on the conscript list for the fall Active Combat Training Mission, but the granddaughter of the man who sparked the fight that began the whole saga as well.

When dropped unprepared and unsuspecting into the decades-old battlefield now known as the Devil's Grainfield, there is only one option for the teenage Cadets of the Occult Defense Division: Unlock their latent magical Potential and survive the ordeal, or die trying.

An overtly queer military fantasy with a science fiction finish, Project Sapling serves as an introduction to an original world of magic, time travel, and extraterrestrial interference on a grand scale, with a side order of international conspiracy to commit peace. Following a grafted and growing family tree from the mountains surrounding the Palouse Basin, this generational coming-of-age tale explores cycles of trauma and healing, fracturing and reconnection, found family, friendship, and the enduring power of the human spirit, featuring a cast as diverse and vibrant as the ecology and geology of the region it takes place across.