The Last Soul Survivor

Before little Emma Eve starts grade school until she graduates atop her high school class, she's teased for the nasty scar on her right forehead, a few inches long, straight down, curving to her left. She has no reason for why it's there, and she learns early to cover it well. She discovers the horrific news of where her scar came from after a lifetime of ridicule. Emma, at only eleven months old, over a century ago, on the day before Thanksgiving, her Mama Bella and her three siblings feel happy for the hope of a family holiday celebration on their Great Plains farm. Joe, husband, father and supposed protector, has been brooding in despondence for months. Now at his boiling point, he consults his financial books over lunch. His plan to trap them all comes together to perfection. To top off his troubles, post war American farmers are fooled by their own government, and Joe is gambling hardcore on grain. In way over his head, he decides to save his whole family from the shame and embarrassment of being poor.

He calls his wife Bella outside to help kill the goose. She picks up three-year-old elegant Ava Mae and four-year-old clever Clyde Carl trots along. Once inside the henhouse, Bella holds the goose for her husband to behead, but before she knows it, he's using both sides of his man's ax on her. He kills little Ava Mae easily. Clyde escapes, hides, he's soon run down. The killer enters the house and kills his babies, ebbing Emma Eve in her crib, and sweet baby James Joseph on his play floor. The killer leaves his house and commits suicide in the barn.

Baby Emma has her skull split wide open and she's given no chance to live by doctors. She miraculously survives and is later adopted by her mother's older sister and her husband. She grows up on their Dakota farm with her older first cousin, 'Sis.' Emma comes of age to marry her husband Winston, who is tasked with telling her the truth about how she got that scar. They are successful at farming and raising four boys, but tragically must bury the two babies of their family. The living boys follow different paths, all have big happy lives. Lane, the baby of the family, becomes a successful lawyer and eventually adopts the story's author, Nickolas, as the baby of his own family.

When Nickolas turns eight, his father Lane is killed suddenly. After this, Nickolas spends summers on his grandparents' farm, growing super close to Grampa Win and Gramma Emma. He later works on the family ranch for his Uncle Mack, who becomes the baby of the family after Lane. While working in the hayfields, Nickolas's cousin casually mentions that their Gramma's father went crazy and killed them all. After Nickolas says goodbye, Emma passes away at the age of eighty-one. Over twenty years later at his Uncle Bud's funeral, the unplanned family reunion sparks the family rediscovery of Emma Eve's miracle survival. Nickolas and family set out on a road trip journey to see her family's five graves and find the farm where she was born and her family was murdered. Set to return home to Los Angeles, Nickolas discovers who his own birth parents are. Emma's adoption process and his are polar opposites, but connected in adoption they are. Her family was lost, his family is gained. Emma Eve's life is marred by tragedy throughout, but she was sensational enough to rise above it.