cruel beginnings as a work of fiction is our entry point into Miriam's world. Sometimes when the human mind is faced with life threatening traumatic circumstances and unacceptable truths, it adapts and achieves incredible feats, thus keeping a person alive when others would surely perish. such is the case for Miriam when she awakes with a concussion on a finished field of battle. Among the many hundreds of dead, she discovers her father still alive but dying. She must survive the wi8ld mountainside and her own shattered mindscape in order to save herself and her father.