The Journey of Lila Winters (Essay Sample)

The Journey of Lila Winters Student Name Institution Affiliations Course Instructor Name Due Date The Journey of Lila Winters That hot summer in 1912, a young woman of twenty gazed into the craggy Appalachian Mountains, which stood hard on its edge. A yellowed photograph lies up in dusty boxes now by age, yet it's still seen through the ages: a young girl staring out over a wide valley; chiseled face into a cross of hope and determination. This is where Lila had to make what might be the harshest decision life would ever ask of her, forming her destiny in ways she could scarcely dream. What Lila's family had done for generations from the small town of Blackwood, where their very lives were embedded with the land which sprawled before her. Winters' farm had its fair number of adversities over the years since the soil turned sick, everyone out there was suffering with the market prices when their crops were not fetching anything at all, and this was the year when the Great Flood had struck, taking away fields and dreams alike, wash into oblivion. Her father wasn't well, and the ailing farm's entire burden lay upon the shoulders of Lila. One fresh morning toward the end of June, Lila was holding a letter in her hand, whose edges were torn from carrying it in her pocket. The letter was an offer from some relative residing in Chicago, where there was opportunity aplenty and much promise. Her cousin Theodore had invited her out to work in his textile factory, just starting up. It was an opportunity to get away from the devastating poverty of Blackwood but brought its own different fears and uncertainties. Lila was always the one to keep a low profile, to be with the books and the solace from nature, more than the raucousness of people gatherings. And her courage, often well hidden beneath a veneer of shyness, but thoughts of leaving kith and kin, to take up cudgels against the unknown, are what gnaws at her. Just days before she is to make her decision, the photograph catches the inner turmoil. On top of that mountain peak, Lila remembered the stories her grandmother had woven about the old country: about the bravery in scenarios where the bravest of women would face her fears and move unyielding against forbidding odds. It was at one time comforting, but now, her stories felt like some heavy mantle placed on her shoulders, one not of her choosing. She felt frightened, not only by unknowns in the city but by the land and the people who were objects of her affection left behind. But in the end, it was not the promise of a better life that truly moved her decision but the hope that maybe this time, she could really make a difference. Lila knew that if she stayed, then, like everything else before it, the farm would ultimately succumb to the r...