Tag: historical fiction

Life with the Aunts: Part 1

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What’s happening with the Pierce girls?

It is June 2, 1860, two days since Hannah left Westport in search of her future. With no means of support, she had to leave her nieces with their other aunts. In this seven part blog series, you’ll see what life is like for Lucy, 14; Ella 10; and Jennie, 8, as they adjust to their new circumstances.

Lucy

It had been two days since my sisters and I said goodbye to Aunt Hannah. Jennie and Ella had gone to live with Aunt Hilda while I had gone with Aunt May. Life with her and Uncle Edmond was not what I had imagined. It wasn’t quite the nonstop drudgery I’d had with Pa when I’d gone to live with him all starry-eyed, thinking he loved me and that’s why he wanted me home. What he’d really wanted was for me to do the woman’s work until he found me a suitable husband, someone with money and influence. If I married well, he’d be proud of me. Until then, there were meals to be cooked and clothes to be washed. I’d been only thirteen. I was fourteen now, and I wasn’t any more ready for marriage than I had been last summer. That wasn’t stopping Aunt May though. She was ticking through her social list looking for a suitable match for me. I wasn’t ready, but she wasn’t listening.

Aunt Hannah would have listened. Yes, she was, according to Aunt May, an old maid. She didn’t look old. She didn’t act old either. She had spent years running the family’s hotel and taking care of Grandma True, and all she got was a few dollars when Pa and my uncles sold the hotel.

I was on my way to see Ella and Jennie, and the way to the parsonage ran by the hotel. I stopped and looked at the front entrance, remembering how I sometimes helped Wesley, our old desk clerk, check in guests.

“Lucy, hello.”

Startled, I turned to see Jake Owens grinning at me. I couldn’t stop smiling, it was so good to see him. “Hey, Jake.”

“Homesick for the old place?”

“The hotel? Not really. Aunt Hannah? Yes.”

“They’re converting your old room to a guest room. I found something when I was cleaning it out. I have it in the stable. Do you want to wait while I get it for you?”

“Can I get it on my way home? I’m late to see my sisters, and Aunt Hilda has a strict schedule at her house.”

“Sure. I’ll be in the stable later, so you’ll find me there.”

“What did I leave?”

“A comb. It has broken teeth, but I figured it might be a keepsake.”

Ma’s comb. How could I have left it? “You’re right. It was my mother’s. Thank you for saving it for me. I’ll be back in an hour or so.”

“I’ll be in the stable.”

“Okay.”

I went on to Aunt Hilda’s. When I got there, Ella was alone in the parlor.

“Where’s Jennie?” I asked.

Ella looked up from her Bible. Her eyes were red from crying. She wiped a tear from her cheek. “In her room. She can’t come out until tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“She had a dream about Uncle Graham’s horse getting hurt, and she told him not to ride yesterday, and he did. A rattlesnake bit his horse.”

“Oh, my. That’s awful. But why is Jennie banished to her room?”

“Because Uncle Graham said an evil spirit had possessed her. That’s the only way she could have known. He whipped her with a belt something terrible.” Ella buried her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook as she sobbed.

I wrapped an arm around her shoulder and drew her to me. “We warned her not to tell her dreams to anyone.”

“But she says if she doesn’t and something bad happens, it will be her fault.”

“I’m going to see her.”

“You really shouldn’t. If Uncle Graham finds out, it’ll just be worse.”

Free Prequel: The Courtship of Hannah True is still available.

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The Monster Tornado of 1860

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From The Press and Tribune, Chicago, June 5, 1860

Combining History and Fiction

Uprooted is set in Chicago in June 1860. As I searched for a way to describe the city, its newspaper, The Press and Tribune, seemed an excellent place to start. I didn’t expect to find an event that would become part of the novel, but being from Kansas and having lived in two towns that experienced tornadoes, the story of the tornado that wiped out Camanche, Iowa, and other towns in its path caught my eye and my heart.

It caught Hannah True’s heart too. Her life had been uprooted because her father’s will left her without a home or income, but when she read about the death and destruction caused by the monster tornado, she understood what true loss was.

Then as now, communities came together to help the survivors of this monster storm, originally reported to have traveled one hundred miles, but days later, the distance was corrected:

“…each day has added to the news of the disaster, each mail has brought us fresh accession to the horrors of a Sunday evening when a fiercer tornado than ever in the memory of man visited the tropics, passed over an extent of country, as it now seems from Western Iowa across Illinois, across the lake and thence into the heart of Michigan, a distance of upwards of four hundred miles.”
“The Great Tornado,” The Press and Tribune, Chicago, Monday, June 11, 1860

Woven into the novel are some of the efforts Chicagoans made to help the victims of this devastating event.

The Adventures of Hannah True

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Better Late than Never

Back in September 2021 when I published Hiram’s Girls, I promised the first book of the spinoff series, Uprooted: The Adventures of Hannah True, would be out in November 2021. I had a complete draft and revisions, but life happened, and I didn’t make that deadline. In the meantime, I have been working hard to make the book even better, and it is now up for pre-order on Amazon.

An 1860 Start

Hannah’s story begins four years before the end of Hiram’s Girls, so Lucy, Ella, and Jennie are younger than they were when you previously saw them. Uprooted begins in 1860 when Hannah’s mother dies and her father’s will goes into full effect. Her father left the hotel to his daughters’ husbands–and Hannah has never married. The brothers-in-law sell the business, and Hannah is left at age 38 to make her own way in the world.

Her plan is to visit her aunt, Gertrude Oaks, in New York City, and reconnect with suffragists, thinking she might join the cause. On the way, she meets a man who offers an alternative. Will she take it? The novel will go live on February 28. You can pre-order an eBook copy here. I’m still working on the paperback. I promise there will be one, but it will probably be after the eBook is available.

The Right Word: Suffragist/Suffragette

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“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”

John Wooden

What I’ve always heard

As a woman who has always been interested in the women’s rights movement, I thought I knew the right word for the women who fought for the right to vote in the United States: suffragette. It was repeated in everything I read and heard over the years. Then I read Sarah Canary by Karen Joy Fowler and came upon the word suffragist for the first time. Because the word was new to me, I had to learn more.

What was true

A quick search on the term revealed Fowler was right. On learning that suffragette as a word did not exist until the early 1900s, I was embarrassed that I had used it in reference to Hannah True, the aunt of the Pierce siblings, in all the novels set in 1855 and forward. If you’d like to know more about the origin of suffragette and how it differs from suffragist, go to this article on the National Park Service site.

My point

When you write historical fiction, or any fiction that contains facts, you run the risk of being wrong, and often it is what you thought you knew that turns out not to be true. However, if you spend time investigating the origin and meaning of every word and detail of every event you want to include in your story, you’ll never get the story written. Research what you know you don’t know, and when you see something at odds with what you believe to be true, look it up. In the meantime, keep writing. The world needs more stories that touch our hearts and minds and challenge our beliefs. And if you do use an incorrect word, sooner or later, someone will let you know.

Title for Book 5 of Pierce Family Saga

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1st book cover attempt

Working title

Ever since publishing Hiram’s War in May, I’ve been searching for a working title for the next book in the series. Somehow a title helps me focus on the story. A few mornings ago, I had an “aha!” moment. I was so impressed with the idea that I headed over to Canva and made a temporary book cover. Emphasis is on “temporary” because maybe the title isn’t as good as I think.

The thought process that led me to Hiram’s Girls went like this. I wanted to focus on Jennie and Ella and their lives after moving in with their father. For several days, all that came to mind was Life with Pa. Ugh! Then I thought of the previous two titles in the series: Hiram’s Boy and Hiram’s War. So why not Hiram’s Girls?

Question: Does my “aha!” moment appeal to readers as much as it did to me? Should I keep searching? Do you have a suggestion for a title?

What? You need to know what Book 5 will be about before you suggest a title?

Here’s what I know: It is November 1864, and I’m thinking the book will extend to the end of the year, so Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays will be in the book as Jennie, 12, and Ella, 14, adjust to their lives in Hidden Springs with their three little sisters, ages 3 months to 2 years, and, of course, their father, Hiram Pierce. What could possibly go wrong? I’m making a list. Check back later for more developments.

What’s Next? A Look at Pierce Family Options

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Hiram’s War: Live on Amazon
                     May 15,2020

Decisions

Those who have read Hiram’s War have a common question: What’s next for the Pierce family? It’s a question I’m asking the five older siblings. Let’s see what they’re telling me.

Cordelia: I’ve spent the last four years as a traveling photographer for Mathew Brady. I’m not sure what I’ll do when the war is over.

Ambrose: I’m heading to New York City to get my wife, son, and stepbrother, then we’re heading for Kansas and a new life.

Lucy: I’m on my way to Cairo to resume nursing duties, but I want to do more, to know more, to save more lives. I want to be a doctor, but I’ll have to fight to make that happen. Women are usually barred from medical schools. 

Ella: I’m looking for a husband and a permanent home for me and Jennie. My older siblings say I don’t know what marriage is all about and I’m asking for trouble, like being fourteen means I don’t know anything. We’ll see. 

Jennie: I always wanted little sisters, and now I have three of them under three years old. Ella and I have split the responsibility: she takes care of the house and I take care of the little ones. It’s only been a week, and I already think I’m in over my head. Help!

Another Option: Aunt Hannah

Hannah True is sister to the Pierce siblings deceased mother. She took the girls in after their mother’s death and raised them until 1860. Then Hannah’s mother died and her brothers-in-law sold the hotel she ran and left her uprooted. At thirty-eight, she is on her own for the first time in her life. In 1848, she was a suffragette. Now, on her way to New York City and a new life, she meets a man who runs a detective agency and gives her an unexpected option. Will she take it? 

So those are my choices. Which one appeals most to you and why? 

For more on the Pierce family, check out the following e-books: Cordelia’s Journey (always 99 cents), For Want of a Father ( on a 99 cent countdown sale May 29-June 5, 2020), and Hiram’s Boy. 

 

Hiram’s War: What Ella and Jennie Want

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Live on Amazon May 15,2020


Homeless

After their mother’s death in 1855, Ella and Jennie went to live with their Aunt Hannah, a single woman who ran the family’s hotel in Westport. When the hotel was sold in 1860 and Aunt Hannah left town, the two sisters went from her loving care to a cold, judgmental  existence with Aunt Hilda and her husband, Reverend Graham Russell. Now it is 1864, and their world is falling apart as war rages around them.

What Jennie wants in her own words:

I’m twelve years old and the baby of the family, and that’s all my sisters and Ambrose see when they look at me: a child who needs protection. They all have advice about my dreams: mainly how I should keep quiet about them. I did that once, and my baby brother, Mark, died. And now I’m having dreams about Pa, and I know he’ll die if I don’t find him, so I have to make my siblings believe me. While I was trying to convince Ella, Uncle Graham and Aunt Hilda overheard us, and Uncle Graham beat me to get rid of the demons he said were working inside me.

Ambrose and my sisters rescued me, but now Ella and I have no home, and she feels responsible to get us one. I’ll have to think about that later because right now, the most important thing is to save my father’s life. I didn’t save my baby brother’s life. I was only three years old then. Pa thought I smothered him when I crawled into his cradle to get him warm, but he was already cold. He didn’t move. Ambrose says Mark was already dead. All I know is I didn’t tell anyone about my dream and Mark died. This time, I have to tell. I have to make people listen. I don’t want to be responsible for another family death.

 

First book in the series


What Ella wants in her own words:

I’m fourteen years old now. I remember when our family was all together, and Jennie and I were the little sisters. We lived in our cabin in Hidden Springs: Ma, Pa, Ambrose, Cordelia, Lucy, Jennie, and me. Those were good days. Then Mark, only one week old, died and Ma got in the family way again, and Delia ran away to get Aunt Hannah. Then Ma had to stay in bed and Lucy took over the cooking and cleaning and taking care of us. I was five and tried to help, but the best I could do was keep track of Jennie. That’s been my job ever since.

I love Jennie, but keeping her out of trouble hasn’t been easy, especially since Aunt Hannah left and we had to go live with Aunt Hilda and Uncle Graham. I’ve told her over and over that she can’t talk about her dreams, but sometimes she blurts them out—and they come true. Now we are homeless. I know Ambrose will find a place for us, maybe with Aunt Gertrude, but that would be only temporary. I want a permanent home. I want to get married, but with a war on, how will I find a husband.

Lucy complained that five years ago when she went to live with Pa, he wanted to find her a suitable husband, someone well-off and respected in the community. If we find Pa and he’s alive, I’m going to ask him to do that for me. I want a real home for me and Jennie.

 

For more about me and my books, visit my author page on Amazon.

 

 

 

Hiram’s War: What Lucy Wants

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Remember Lucy Pierce, Hiram’s oldest daughter, from For Want of a Father?

Lucy’s back, nineteen years old now, and she’s been to war with the boy she loved and served as a Civil War nurse with Mother Bickerdyke. She’s taking a break from a battlefield hospital to join her sisters in Westport and do what she can to protect them from Confederate General Price and his soldiers who are planning to march through the town on their way to Ft. Leavenworth.

Lucy in her own words: 

I’m almost twenty, and I’m a widow. I married Jake when he was dying from dysentery like so many other soldiers. No one knew the cause or what to do, so all I could do was sit with him. Now I will devote my life to healing the sick in honor of my one true love. But first, I must make sure my sisters are safe from Price and his rebel marauders.

I convinced Cordelia we must go to Westport and watch over them. Now that we have arrived, I see the situation is much worse than I imagined. Jennie is still having visions of the future, and Uncle Graham has beaten her with a belt until her back bled. I have put iodine on the cuts, but there will be scars, and it will be some time until her bruises heal.

Jennie insists she’s had a vision of Pa being hurt, and we must help him. After the way he treated me, Cordelia, and Ambrose, I am resistant to the idea, but Jennie won’t stop pleading, so we must do it for her sake. Once we have found him, I will move on to the next goal: finding a home for Ella and Jennie. Ella’s marriage idea is so misguided. She doesn’t remember how bad things were between our parents and how bad an arranged marriage can turn out to be. Once my sisters are taken care of, I will return to the Sanitary Commission and see where my nursing skills are most needed. Please, let this war be over soon.


Hiram’s War is available for pre-order on Amazon and goes live on May 15. If you enjoy American historical fiction dealing with family struggles, order your copy now.

Hiram’s War: What Ambrose Wants

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Ambrose: the disowned son of Hiram Pierce

If you have read Hiram’s Boy, you may remember the incident that caused Hiram to disown his only son. Despite Ambrose’s attempt to show his father the truth in January 1860, they have not reconciled. It is now October 1864, and Ambrose’s main concerns are his wife and children and his younger sisters who may be in the path of General Sterling Price’s Confederate forces on their way to Ft. Leavenworth.

 

Ambrose in his own words: I’m twenty years old and married. Susan and I have a son who is four, and we hope to adopt my stepbrother, Daniel Carstairs. His mother never wanted him and left him on a doorstep. He was sent to an orphanage where Cordelia and I found him when I was trying to prove to Pa what a liar his new wife was.

Lucy and I have given up on Pa, but Jennie hasn’t. I don’t know about Ella. She has some plan about Pa finding her a husband. I can’t believe she wants to do that, but she doesn’t have as much personal experience with him as Lucy, Cordelia, and I do.

I came to Westport to protect Ella and Jennie from Price and his soldiers, but I found out they needed more protection from Uncle Graham. Now that they’re out of his house, we’re on our way to find Pa at Jennie’s insistence. No matter what happens with that, I need to find my sisters a new home, and then I need to get back to my family. If Ella would give up her nonsense about getting married, she and Jennie could come with me, and Aunt Gertrude would take her in.

No matter what decisions my sisters make, as soon as I can, I’m going to bring my wife and son to Kansas and start our life together. Will this war ever end so I can make that happen?

Hiram’s War is on pre-order on Amazon and will be live on May 15.