SQL Server 2017 Availability Group Deployment - Some availability replicas are not synchronizing data
It turns out, the process was working normally, but I was missing a step at the end.  Once I had configured the availability group, I didn't know that I then had to connect to the remote server and add the database.  In the tutorials I had found online, none had included that step.  It was a small but significant item.
Once I added the database on the remote server, the synchronization process started and the failover cluster worked as intended.  Thanks to everyone who offered the suggestions on how to resolve this. I'll mark it as user error on my part.  Sigh....