Donna Howell, in making her choice, had not only neglected her own personal life, but had inadvertently alienated her son and daughter from a family life of love and understanding they sorely needed. Now that Sheri was in college, it only compounded Donna's financial responsibilities, and on the rare occasions when they were together, she found that the gulf between them had perceptibly widened.

It had been Sheri who had first suggested the Christmas trip to Yosemite, and when Donna had eagerly agreed to the reuniting of the family, she had no way of knowing what had really precipitated her daughter's motives. Nor at the time could she have imagined what would actually happen-and happen in such a way that went far beyond the bounds of family unity the young mother envisioned.

It was only on rare occasions like this that Donna Howell questioned the way things went in her life, as she wholeheartedly believed her main function as a parent was to do whatever was required to provide for her children, a belief fostered by the problems she had had to face at a very young age. She had been the only child of a policeman, her mother having died shortly before Donna's tenth birthday, and although her father did everything possible to create opportunities for her betterment, she was left on her own shortly after she turned twenty when he was slain trying to avert a bank robbery. Donna had been a junior in college and dating Walter Howell at the time, but not until her father's tragic death did she attach any significance to Walter's romantic intentions. Shortly after graduation they were married and Donna divided her time between teaching and making a home for her husband, but with the birth of her daughter the following year, all of her attention was required at home. A year after Sheri was born they had their second child, Kevin, and Donna had pretty well settled down to being a mother and housewife, a life she was willing to accept. But then, when she was only twentytwo, tragedy struck again-her husband was the innocent victim of an automobile accident.