Category: Historical Fiction
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Reconstruction Diary Meditations: Remember our farming ancestors in winter
We think we have it bad this weekend with the snowfall and frigid temperatures. But a massive winter storm – idyllic though Currier & Ives make it appear in their 1868 “American Homestead Winter” – would have been a huge challenge for my ancestors, Mary Jane and Lizzie Edwards and anyone who lived on a…
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One Kid's Story
No, I don’t believe he did it. Why would you even ask me that question? I won’t believe he did it. Not without more proof than what today’s paper said.
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Who threw the cheese?
Kids and Their Secrets The errant slice of American cheese that ended up on the bathroom floor has baffled all investigators for more than fifty years. Its softened edges, missing corner, and sweaty surface reside far back in my brain’s mystery album. Not a single one of us four kids admitted to tossing it beside…
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Am I a history snob?
Once again, I’m reading a historical novel. They’re my go-to in the Libby filters when I’m searching for a new online freebie read. My setting preference is 1800’s United States. That’s probably because of the novel series I’m writing based on the diary of my Quaker ancestors during Reconstruction. Or the fact that I taught…
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Who are your people? Google them!
Genealogy has had an oscillating presence in my life. Sometimes its fan blows straight at me and keeps me cool and comfy; sometimes it blows in another direction, and I just catch a slight waft of the gentle breeze. Over the years, it’s depended on the amount of time I’ve been able to invest in…
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Chasing our Quaker ancestors from a log cabin in the woods
It was beginning to seem like a game of tag… to find out as much as possible about my three times great aunt, Mary Jane Edwards who went South with her sister Lizzie– my three times great grandmother– to teach freedmen right after the Civil War. And it was filled with stops and starts, dashes, and…
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Making your writing real
What’s your strategy? Call me old school. I have gray hair. I can accept that tag without too much fuss. I never fell into the rabbit hole of video games or TikToking that sucks and slurps the gray matter right out of some folks’ heads and dissolves hours from their lives. So visual learning or…
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Where to Even Begin?
A runaway mule team that nearly mows down two women? A quarrel between two sisters who claim to be pacifists? A public argument between a female Northerner and a male Confederate sympathizer? For several months, I debated about the best narrative hook for my novel based on the true diary of my Quaker ancestor who…
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We were on a quest
The single-lane gravel drive through the line of trees gave a shady respite to the heat of the June day. We snaked the car up the hill. According to the ochre-colored map, we had turned off old US 40 in the right place, but there wasn’t a tombstone in sight. In fact, as our tires…
