Opening lines of As the Crow Flies.’

I’m working on As the Crow Flies the follow up historical novel after A Good Place.

Here are two openings I’m tinkering with.  Your honest input is appreciated.  No one writes a book alone.  I need your prayer, suggestions, even criticism.  Everything can be improved. 

Opening A:

Ft. Worth, Texas

Christmas Eve 1955

As the crow flies it was only about twenty miles from our home in Ten Mile to Sugartown Louisiana.

After the Westport Fight it might as well have been a million.

The fight broke loose seventy-four years ago on a cold Christmas eve in the year 1881.

I was only a girl of sixteen but I remember like it happened last week.

Then again, it seems a lifetime ago and I look in the mirror at the old woman I am and ask, “Nancy Missouri Wright, were you really there?”

I just feel that scar on my leg and it’s all the reminder I need that I was there, right in the middle of the fight.

An event  that changed everything about the place I loved.

Especially for two families.

Especially for the boy I loved.

It was a time and event that forever changed the destinies of everyone involved.

Opening B

My name is Missouri Cotten, and I was born into a family of thieves.

It’s how I ended up in the middle of what came to be known as the Westport Fight.

This is my story of what happened on that cold Christmas Eve way back in 1881.

Some folks won’t like my recollections..

But it’s my story.

I was there and saw it all.

Folks still ask me, “Mizz, what side were you on?

The Outsiders or the Ten Milers?

Hey, I was on the Missouri-Cotten-Staying-Alive side.

Since I’m telling this to you mouth to ear, it’s evident I survived it.

But others didn’t.

This is their story.

Tell me about what you like/dislike about each opening.

Which opening sentence/paragraph would “force” you to keep reading?