17/05/2026
1940. By the middle of that winter nearly every family in town had begun counting meals carefully, stretching flour, potatoes, and canned vegetables farther than anyone thought possible while factories reduced shifts, farms struggled to recover from years of drought, and more men quietly disappeared onto freight trains searching for work in distant cities that were just as desperate as the towns they left behind. Every evening, long before darkness settled fully across the streets, a line formed outside the small church basement where an elderly widow named Margaret Hale stood beside a dented metal soup pot serving meals to anyone who arrived hungry enough to ask. She had lost her husband during the Depression and buried two sons before either reached adulthood, yet somehow grief had softened her rather than hardened her, and despite having almost nothing herself she spent each day collecting spare vegetables, stale bread, leftover bones from butchers, and whatever donations the town could quietly spare.