Sarah's Gold

[Liberal]

Several years back, I was challenged to write a short story illustrating the lives of people in a libertarian context ... with a catch. I had to use a particular cast of people in a particular setting. The point, as I recall, was to show that libertarianism could not work in certain hypothetical settings.

There was to be a poor family, consisting of a Jewish pig farmer, incapacitated by a stroke, married to a Mandean (rare Christian sect) woman, both of whom had different governments. In the house also were to be the pig farmer's father, who had cancer, but could not afford care; a twenty-year-old daughter with twin kids (one of them retarded) and pregnant with another one; and her brother, fourteen, who unlike his sister, was olive skinned (like his mother).

There was to be a state of the art cancer facility nearby, which few in the area could afford. Finally there was to be a nearby city where the husband of the daughter had fled when he abandoned her.

So, that's what I was given to work with, and the result was Sarah's Gold. It is a story about struggle, edification, and triumph. I don't know whether it will all fit in one post, so I'll break it up into sections.

Thanks for your patience. Maybe this will give you something to read when the board is slow.

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Warning: What follows is literature.