This past week I had the privilege of visiting a book club as Lucy Deering, one of my characters in The Late Sooner. As an author who spends a long stretches of time in solitary, it’s a joy to get to meet readers. Lucy was my great-grandmother who went into the Oklahoma Territory with her husband, Sanford, in 1889 in the first land run. I spent over a year researching this project online poring over hand-written documents and letters at…
Recently one of my blog readers wrote they wanted to see the entries I mentioned in the post “20/20 Hindsight.” This is the one I entered in the Poetry, Unrhymed, Long category. My great-grandparents settled in the Oklahoma Territory in 1889. It was too late to plant crops by the time they arrived. The next year the settlers endured a crop-killing drought and a prairie fire. The only thing left were turnips. The locals called 1890, “The Year of…
Recently we hosted our annual family picnic at our farm. We always pick pumpkins and any other produce on a hayride through nearby fields after a hearty lunch of hot dogs and delicious sides. This year Vic planted turnips. Most in the guests didn’t know what they were or what they tasted like. Our dear ancestor, Lucy, could have told them. In 1890 that’s all she and her children had to eat after a killing drought and prairie fire consumed…
This picture contains three of the people I’ve written about in my historical fiction books. On the left is Sanford Deering the main character of The Late Sooner who went into the Oklahoma Territory in the first land run in 1889. The lady is Nora, The Late Sooner’s Daughter, who came back to Missouri when she was nine. The child is my father, Henry, of Hard Times in the Heartland who served in WW II. The old gentleman on the right is Henry Greenup…
As a young mother, I remember looking out my basement window watching a tornado snake across the sky a few miles south-west of us. At the time, I didn’t know about the power of the name of Jesus. As I watched, the white tail turned black as it picked up debris from a school and a church in the suburban Kansas City neighborhood. Years later, I learned as a believer in Jesus Christ, He had given me and all His…