I happened upon an exhibit of Fred Geary’s woodcuts at the Kansas City Public Library’s Central Branch earlier this week. It was another example of how writing historical fiction has changed my perspective on the world. (See my earlier post on reading a newspaper article about modern gold panning.) Geary’s woodcuts […]
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Fort Laramie: Outpost of Civilization to Weary Travelers
By mid-June, the emigrants traveling the Oregon Trail in the 1840s had trekked 650 miles from Independence, Missouri, to Fort Laramie, in what is now Wyoming. Although they had traveled for two months or more, they had only completed one-third of the journey from Independence to Oregon. Most of the […]
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Great pictures on Adventure Dates of Ash Hollow, Windlass Hill, and Courthouse and Jail Rocks — all important landmarks on the Oregon Trail. I’ll be writing soon about the emigrants’ progress along the Trail in June, but for now, take a look at these pictures.
Continue readingRemembering Generations Past
My husband was the fifth generation in his family born in Saline County, Missouri. After we moved to Missouri in 1979, he and I – and later our children – spent several Memorial Day weekends helping his mother gather flowers and vases to decorate the graves of grandparents, great-aunts, and […]
Continue readingThe Fluidity of Time
This past weekend I traveled through southwestern Missouri and northwestern Arkansas, visiting places of historical and recent significance. We moved from the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR, to the Walmart Visitors Center, also in Bentonville, to the nearby Pea Ridge National Military Park (a Civil War battlefield), […]
Continue readingCatalpa: Fine Dining in Arrow Rock, MO
On Monday, I wrote about the Oregon Trail emigrants choosing their leaders on the Kansas and Nebraska prairies. This post back-tracks to Arrow Rock, Missouri, where my first Oregon Trail novel begins. And today’s post is about a superb meal I had in Arrow Rock in 2012 – 165 years […]
Continue readingOrder on the Trail: The Governance of Wagon Trains
By mid-May, the emigrants to Oregon in the 1840s had settled into a routine. They were past the frontier towns and out on the open prairie. Greenhorns without experience driving oxen and mules had learned to manage their teams. Wives who had never cooked on an open fire had figured […]
Continue readingGold Stories of Today and Yesterday
I read the newspaper differently now because I write historical fiction. Articles that I once would have skipped over intrigue me because of their connection to what I write. On April 30, the Wall Street Journal carried a piece on gold mining in the riverbeds of California. The novel I am currently […]
Continue readingJumping Off to the Unknown
Part of my horoscope on my birthday this year read “Develop a way of handling the unexpected, as it will become a regular occurrence for you.” But isn’t this true for everyone? The unexpected becomes expected, because change comes to all of us. Sometimes we seek the change, other times […]
Continue readingTools for Writing Historical Fiction
Writing descriptions is not something that comes naturally to me. I much prefer writing dialogue. But when writing historical fiction, writing about place is critical. In my historical novels, I have to recreate a world that disappeared long before the lifetimes of my readers. How have I found information about […]
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