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Tag: 1889

A Prequel of “The Late Sooner”

A Prequel of “The Late Sooner”

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…

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Last Farewell

Last Farewell

  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…

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Four Generations that Built America

Four Generations that Built America

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…

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