Nebraska

Have You Had This Culinary Combo? By Pam Crooks

by

Chili and Cinnamon Rolls!

We’re smack-dab in the middle of winter, many of us are suffering from the cold and snow, and that means it’s soup and chili time!

It’s funny how different parts of the country have their renowned favorites that others who live even a few states away have never heard of. Remember Runzas that I blogged about several months ago? (You can view it HERE if you haven’t already.) Many of you were unfamiliar with such a thing even though Runzas are hugely popular in the Midwest.

Chili and Cinnamon Rolls are another phenomenon around here, one I hadn’t heard of myself until a number of years ago. Since then, I’m learning how hugely popular the unusual combination is, especially in school cafeterias, as a fundraiser feature, in restaurants, and even at Nebraska Husker football tailgates.

The first reference was found in 1905, and then another popped up in California in 1953. They were noticeably not common at the time, however, until Congress passed the National School Lunch Act in 1946, whereby the USDA included chili in its recipes-for-schools collections. Shortly thereafter, schools in Greeley, Colorado, were the first to serve the combo to their students. There’s even a story told that loggers had a bowl of chili poured over a cinnamon roll in the morning before they headed out for a long day of logging.

My husband and I grew up in Nebraska during this time, and neither of our schools’ cafeterias offered the pair. It was likely not until the advent of folks raving online decades later that spurred the popularity of such an unusual combination.  That and word of mouth from popular local restaurants.

Never heard of them? What is the appeal, you ask?

It’s all about the contrast of the salty, slightly spicy texture of the chili with the soft dough sweetened with sugar and cinnamon. If you want to get scientific about it, the sugar and butter cool the chili’s capsaicin, and the sweet-and-salty elevate the taste of the cinnamon.

There are several ways to eat the pairing:

  1. Eat them separately with the cinnamon roll as dessert. My daughter will let her kids have half the cinnamon roll first, then once their chili is gone, they can have the other half of the roll. 🙂
  2. Use pieces of the roll to dip into–or scoop up–the chili.
  3. Simply alternate bites of chili and cinnamon roll.
  4. Crumble the roll like a cracker and sprinkle on top or stir into the chili.
  5.  Or (and this is what I like to do) put the cinnamon roll in a bowl and pour the chili on top.

I have eaten them every way except #4. But trust me, the combo is delicious any way you do it.

Have you ever heard of Chili and Cinnamon Rolls? Have you had them?

What is the strangest food combo you’ve tried – and liked?

 

To stay up on our latest releases and have some fun, too, join our Facebook Reader Group HERE!

 

Have you ever heard of a Runza? by Pam Crooks

by

If you’re not from the Midwest, I suspect you haven’t.  But here in Nebraska, this beloved sandwich was born and bred only 45 minutes from where I live.

Runzas are hugely popular as a hand-held meal with browned hamburger, shredded cabbage, and onion wrapped in soft dough, served warm, and often with ketchup. Thousands have been sold at Nebraska Cornhusker football games, for example. Drivers will make a pit stop off of Interstate 80 to grab a few for the drive to their destination.  Even my brother from Amarillo, Texas, ordered a dozen frozen Runzas to be shipped to my niece in Dallas who was pregnant and craving them.

They’re that good.

Their start in Nebraska actually had its roots planted when Germans started moving to Russia in the 1700s at the invitation of German princess Catherine the Great, who married into Russian royalty.  As incentive for her countrymen to move to Russia with her, she offered free land, religious freedom, and no requirement to serve in the Russian military.  It was inevitable that the Germans became influenced by Russian dishes, specifically the “pirozhki,” a baked-or-fried hand pie stuffed with savory or sweet fillings.

Also inevitable was the Germans tweaking the pie to suit their own tastes, and their version was called the “bierock.”  It’s said that farmers enjoyed them as a hot meal while they worked in the fields.

By the late 1800s, the promises made by Catherine the Great began to fade, and the Germans were being forced to assimilate into Russian cultures, including their military.  Rebelling, the German Russians fled the country and settled in the Great Plains of America. By 1940, nearly 1/2 million had settled in the United States, with roughly 20,000 of them in Lincoln, Nebraska, alone.

Two German Russian siblings, brother Alex Brening and sister Sally Everett, both of whom lived in Lincoln, began selling the homemade bierocks as lunch for factory workers. The bierocks were so popular that the siblings eventually opened their first restaurant location in Lincoln in 1949.

But trademarking their recipe proved a bit difficult since “bierock” was too general and too cultural, so they named the pies “Runza,” believed to have been poached from “krautrunz,” German for bierocks, or “runsa,” German for ‘belly’ from the rounded pouch shape of the pie.

In 1966, the siblings opened their second location. By 1979, franchises for Runza Restaurants became available.  Today, there are 85 Runza locations throughout Nebraska, with six more in Colorado, Kansas, Iowa, and South Dakota.

 

 

My daughters LOVED Runzas when I made them for dinner, and now they make them for their own children.  Here’s my recipe:

RUNZAS

1 1/2 lb of hamburger, browned and drained

1/2 head of small cabbage, grated

1/2 onion, chopped

Salt and Pepper

2 frozen bread dough loaves (or individual frozen dinner rolls)

Directions:

Add cabbage and onion to hot, drained hamburger.  Season well with salt and pepper.  Stir well and leave in kettle with lid on while preparing bread dough.

Roll out dough on floured surface. Cut dough into serving size squares, about 4 x 4 inches.  Fill centers with hamburger mixture.  Pull up sides of dough and seal.  Place sealed side down on greased cookie sheet.

Bake 375 degrees for 20 minutes or until golden brown.  Serve with ketchup, if desired.

These make great leftovers, too.

 

 

Have you ever heard of a Runza?  Or had one?

What is your favorite fast food sandwich?

Let’s chat, and you could win a $10 gift card for your favorite fast food sandwich!

 

To stay up on our latest releases and have some fun, too, join our Facebook Reader Group HERE!

Minnie Freeman & the Schoolchildren’s Blizzard ~ by Pam Crooks

by

I’m a Nebraska girl, born and bred. Never lived anywhere else. So when I was browsing through one of my research books on American history, one story in particular, titled “Nebraska’s Fearless Maid,” caught my interest.

The winter of 1888 was brutal for its blizzards, and the one on January 12, 1888, was no different. The relatively warm morning showed no hint of snow, and Minnie Freeman was teaching school like any other day in her small sod schoolhouse in Mira Valley, Nebraska. Mid-afternoon, sudden 45 mph winds came up and blew the door in. As Minnie helped her thirteen pupils bundle up in their coats and hats, raging winds blew the windows in and ripped off the roof. Snow dumped from dark, dense clouds and whirled over the Nebraska and South Dakota prairie, quickly obliterating nearby landmarks.

Minnie could not simply wait out the storm. Her schoolhouse was falling apart, and she had to get the children to safer shelter. Having confiscated a ball of twine from one mischievous boy earlier that day, Minnie tied all the children together in a group, leashing them to her own body. Holding the youngest in her arms, a girl of about five, she set out into the gale-force winds with biting sleet and trudged 3/4 of a mile to the nearest home, all the while coaxing the children to keep walking and not to be afraid.

Minnie Freeman and her students in front of the sod house school.

In truth, exhaustion was setting in for Minnie from the rigors of holding the little girl, constant encouragements to the others, and the very real worries they could get lost. But thankfully, they made it to the farm house and safety.

Temperatures dipped to 40 degrees below zero that night, and the storm raged for twelve hours. Because of the storm’s timing during the school day, and that so many were caught unaware, the blizzard of January 12, 1888, has been dubbed the “Schoolchildren’s Blizzard” and is still remembered to this day.

Unfortunately, for some parents in the area, it would be several days before they could learn if their children survived–and some didn’t.

“I’ve never felt such a wind,” she told a reporter from the Ord Quiz, a local newspaper, shortly after the disaster. “It blew the snow so hard that the flakes stung your face like arrows. All you could see ahead of you was a blinding, blowing sheet of snow.”

Minnie was hailed a hero after the ordeal. Newspapers across the nation picked up her story and celebrated her actions, netting her – get this! – 200 proposals of marriage. School-children as far away as Boston wrote essays in her honor, but perhaps the most enduring accolade was a song and chorus written by William Vincent in her honor.

Sheet music for the Victorian parlor song by the composer William Vincent, “Thirteen Were Saved; Or Nebraska’s Fearless Maid.”

Today, Mira Valley is a ghost town located in north-central Nebraska, near present-day Ord, and Minnie’s heroics is a testament to the selfless dedication teachers show every day.

Have you ever experienced a scary weather-related incident?

Pioneer Courage Park–and a giveaway!!!

by

We are always talking about history and the frontier and courage here on this blog.

So I went to a park in Omaha, that’s one of my favorite places ever, called Pioneer Courage Park.

I take people who visit Omaha to this place and once or twice I have just gone to downtown Omaha and walked around. I’m just in love with this wagon train sulpture.

If you look carefully at the bottom of this picture below it says Pioneer Courage.

There are four wagons. One each pulled by a different team. (well, one is drawn by hand)

One drawn by a team of Oxen. (hint, below, I’m the one on the right)

and mules.

There’s also a hand drawn cart which is mostly how the Mormon pioneers crossed the country. It boggles the mind that they had such small carts. what in the world did they eat?

Amazing desire for religious freedom.

There are also people, women walking, women carrying a baby. They say that everyone who wasn’t driving the wagons walked. It not only took weight off the wagon, and made it easier on the horses/mules/oxen. But it also was more comfortable to walk. the wagons shook and rattled along, no wind could get in past the cover, it was a miserable way to travel. Imagine that. Walking ALL THE WAY ACROSS AMERICA WAS MORE COMFORTABLE THAN RIDING IN A COVERED WAGON!!!

This guy is the wagon master. Think about that job for a minute. Did they pay him? did he go once and stay in the west or did he go back to the beginning and start over every year?

This guy below is leading a horse and there are deer on the pack horse. Sort of blurry, sorry.

 

He’s bringing in food. but one guy I talked to said it was rare for a hunter to find food. The wild animals learned to run far from the trail. Mostly, any food you were going to eat on the Oregon Trail, you had to bring it with you.

Lots of people leading the teams where the going is rough. One wagon was ‘stuck in the mud’. Very cool. Everyone pushing and urging the animals to pull.

Many pioneers brought a milk cow along, this one is tied to the back of the wagon and being led to Oregon. Long way to go home.

There are several buffalo just here and there on the downtown streets, like a block or two away from the Pioneer Courage Park. So cool to walk down a street and meet up with an iron buffalo.

 

As part of the Pioneer Courage there was also a small group of Native Americans. A reminder that some people were heading into a new land. And some people were already there.

So many of my characters are trying to tear a living out of wild lands.

In my current series, Wyoming has a total population of 9000. TOTAL. One out of five are women.

Yet somehow this state was the first to give women the right to vote.

There was Pioneer Courage in the west even after it was beyond the age of the pioneer.

To get your name in a drawing for a signed copy of Laws of Attraction, leave a comment about your favorite park.

Where do you like to go and just hang out.

There are several such beautiful places in Omaha. The Henry Doorley Zoo, the Lauritzen Gardens. Bookstores.

But none better than Pioneer Courage Park.

The Laws of Attraction

Can they risk giving in to the attraction between them while their lives are on the line?

If widowed seamstress Nell Armstrong has to make one more pair of boring chaps for the cowboys in her tiny Wyoming town, she might just quit the business altogether! So meeting Brand Nolte, a widower struggling to raise three girls on his own, seems like her dream come true. Brand has no idea how to dress the girls properly, and Nell finally has a chance to create beautiful outfits while also teaching the girls to sew.

But Nell is much more than a seamstress, and the investigative skills and knowledge she picked up alongside her late lawman husband soon become critical when a wounded stagecoach-robbery survivor is brought to town. As danger closes in from all sides, Nell and Brand must discover who has a target trained on them before it’s too late.

“A richly detailed adventure that captivates till the end.”–Publishers Weekly on Forged in Love

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Bakerbookhouse.com (it’s on a good sale!)

National Frontiers Trail Museum

by

My Day at the

National Frontier Trails Museum

This picture shows the trains vs the trails in 1880

First let me say that the Santa Fe Trail information was fascinating.

I went to the museum, in Independence, Missouri, to find out about the Oregon Trail.

But the Santa Fe Trail was so unexpected that I could fill a blog post with that.

I’m setting a book, partially, on a wagon train.

Different setting for me, and I’m a little nervous about making it interesting.

But I’ve got to get these folks from Chicago to the wild west somehow, so a wagon train it is.

As I wrote, I would have said I know tons about the Oregon Trail, the American frontier and wagon trains.

Turns out I didn’t.

So a trip to Independence was born.

I ended up talking to a museum guy for a long time and he really knew everything. Very interesting guy, Travis Boley.

Then after I quizzed him for a long time, I wandered for longer still.

The Oregon Trail was first passed by fur traders on foot or horseback as early as 1811. Less than ten years after Lewis and Clark.

The trail became passable by a wagon, such as the one above, in 1836. From the most heavily traveled years, 1846-1869 it’s estimated that 400,,000 people took that trail west, including those who turned onto the California Trail. The trail declined after the Transcontinental Railway opened in 1869. Train travel was faster, cheaper and safer than wagon train travel. But these wagon trains continued in a much reduced number until 1890.

Ignore my smiling face and look in the back of that wagon, Now imagine your home. All the stuff you own. Those wagons are TINY. And you had to fit everything you owned into them.

 

As a Nebraskan, I particularly enjoyed information that concerned Nebraska.

This is info about Scottsbluff, a town in Nebraska but an actual bluff, too. Huh, never gave that much thought. But duh.

Chimney Rock is also a Nebraska landmark.

For me, when I get out of a museum, I find I’ve taken more pictures of SIGNS than artifacts. I love to read about the objects and find snapping pictures of signs helps me to remember what I saw.

I LOVED this list of all you have to carry on the wagon train.

Some interesting points: Despite what looks like a high cost, many of the things you have to bring, like oxen or mules, the wagon, the supplies, the clothes, the guns, are things you already have. And also, when you get to your destination, those things you only needed for the trip, like a team of oxen, can be sold for a good price. Yes, you need to scrape the money together to go, but once you sell it all in the high frontier market, the trip becomes mostly free.

I liked the idea of ‘jumping off points.’

Travis said the Missouri River kept getting more and more navigable (that’s a word, right?) by steamboats. As the boats kept getting farther and farther upstream, the pioneers could ride the boat farther. The jumping off points went from St. Louis to Independence, Missouri. To St Joseph, Missouri then Omaha.

Wagon train riders had to haul practical things. It was expected that someone on the train, perhaps many people, would haul their own forge. the tools were practical.

There was no room for fussy fabric or glass dishes. They needed axes and pots and wheels and parts for a broken wagon. Many more frivolous things hauled along, ended up being left behind on the trail.

I highly enjoyed my trip to the National Frontiers Trail Museum and be on the lookout for a story in my future with a wagon train. Hopefully written with a lot of good information in it.

http://www.maryconnealy.com

 

 

Something to be Thankful For

by

I’m part of a Black Friday in October Sale!

Friday October 21-through-28

I put my book, Thankful for the Cowboy on sale a few days early so you can get a copy for 99 cents right now.

I also realized I’d never made this novella into a print book. So if anyone prefers print, go grab a copy, it’s on sale, too, the lowest price Kindle would allow.

 

Tom MacKinnon rides up driving a wagon with a second wagon trailing him. He and his sister builds windmills.

They’ll ask for very little money and, in exchange Lauren Drummond, newly widowed mother of four nearly grown sons, will help them learn to survive in the Sandhills of Nebraska. What to grow, what to hunt, how to build a sod house.

Tom’s windmills will save her ranch during a terrible drought.

Lauren needs three windmills before the oncoming winter freezes her few remaining, extremely shallow, ponds, or her growing herd of cattle is going to die of thirst.

She eagerly agrees to teach him the ways of the Sandhills. She’s not ready to think of another man. But Tom changes her mind. His little sister and one of her sons find love together before Tom and Lauren do.

Click to buy on Amazon

The Charm of a Country Church by Pam Crooks

by

Fifteen minutes from our cabin at the lake, a quaint Catholic church resides amongst sprawling corn fields in eastern Nebraska.  If not for our son-in-law, an avid bicyclist who loves to ride miles and miles on gravel roads in the middle of nowhere, we would never have known Sacred Heart Church existed.  He was quick to text me a picture.

I fell in love.

Shortly thereafter, we drove out to see this adorable place of worship. The countryside was blissfully hushed, with only the rustling leaves on the soon-to-be-harvested corn stalks breaking the solitude. Though the sign states Sacred Heart Church – Cedar Hill, well, there is no Cedar Hill in Nebraska.  Not anymore.

However, there was once, back in 1872, when it was a tiny farming community that boasted a blacksmith shop, a post office, and a general store.  The townspeople hoped Union Pacific would lay track nearby and help them grow.  Unfortunately, track was laid farther north, and the little town eventually withered away.  But the church’s name remained.

Established in 1879, Sacred Heart Church – Cedar Hill was built in a field where the corn had been burned before the original 40′ x 60′ structure was erected.  The charred stalks can still be seen in the church’s crawl space to this day.

In later years, a bell tower and new entrance was added, as well as a sacristy and sanctuary.  Next door, an adorably cozy church hall was festively decorated for autumn and ready for donuts on its designated Sunday after Mass. Charmingly, the hasp on the door was held in place by a plastic spoon lest the wind catch the door and fling it wide.  The church remains a beloved parish for the little towns surrounding it, an astounding 142 years later.

But I digress.

Fast forward to the present and my arrival to Sacred Heart Church.  I couldn’t leave without seeing more, and I boldly walked up the narrow sidewalk and past the sign displaying the days and times of the Masses held every month.  Unbelievably, the door was unlocked, and I went inside.

My heart melted at the sight before me.  Colorful, clean and tidy, and lovingly decorated with flowers of the season, an array of beautiful statues stood in humble reverence to our Lord.  The altar drew me, as did the peace.  I couldn’t stop staring.  Or taking pictures.

 

Nor could I leave without spending time in the front pew, in quiet prayer.  I wanted to linger longer, but my husband and our dog waited by the car after a little outdoor exploring of their own.  After I left, still not quite believing there was no locks on the doors, we drove a short distance down a well-cared for gravel road, a path literally hewn through the corn field.

Behind the church, a cemetery appeared, and again, we parked and left our car to explore. I’ve always had a certain fascination with cemeteries and the wealth of history quietly contained in them.  I wondered about those who made their final resting place there, how they lived, how they died, some too young, some surprisingly old.

A meandering stroll down the rows and between the graves revealed Bohemian-Moravian immigrants born in the 1800s.  Many of their headstones were engraved in their native language.  Babies rested with their aged parents.  My imagination ran rampant with how drastically their lives would have changed after arriving in America and the strange place called Nebraska.  Yet they stayed, they worked, they prospered.

 

And they fought to keep America free.  Newer headstones, recently etched, revealed soldiers who enlisted in various branches of the military throughout various wars.  A flag blowing above the corn stalks is a symbol of the patriotism that still runs strong here.

 

 

On this Veterans Day, my visit to this little country church and cemetery couldn’t have been more timely.  Reluctantly, we left, my heart full, my pride strong, and my resolve fervent to come back again soon.

Note: Sincere thanks to Cecilia Hall, great-granddaughter of early Moravian settlers to Cedar Hill, for sharing her enthusiasm and knowledge as I wrote this article. Cecilia and her family still attend Sacred Heart Church. Her devotion to her heritage and her little country church was inspiring and joyful.

Do you have a veteran or two in your family? 

Tell me about him or her or them, and you could win a 3′ x 5′ American flag!

Pole not included.  US winners only.

Healing Machines. Work of an Eccentric? Or a Genius? By Pam Crooks

by

I recently read a fascinating story about an artist that once lived not far from me in the sandhills of Nebraska.  Emery Blagdon was born in 1907, the oldest of six children, and a farmer’s son.  He ended his education at a country school to work on the farm, but at age 18, he left home to drift around the country for ten years, riding the rails for adventure.

Once he returned home, however, he stayed home, surrounded by family. He never married, never had children.  He rarely bathed and wore his hair long, unusual for a man at the time, and donned baggy clothes that often needed laundering.  He chopped wood every day for heat, drew his water from a well, and grew all his own food.  Always a loner, his niece remembers him as being very kind, very gentle and quiet.  When his uncle died, leaving him the family’s 160-acre farm, Emery didn’t work the land but instead leased it, which provided him a modest income and allowed him to do what he loved best.

On the farm was a 800-square-foot shed that Emery devoted the next thirty years to making what he called “my pretties.”  He created metal sculptures using only what others called junk and a pair of pliers. Yet each creation, never measured, was symmetrical.  After the deaths of his parents, brother and sister from cancer, he hoped to heal people with the energy from his art.

Some called him crazy.  While the farm deteriorated from neglect, as did his personal appearance, neighbors couldn’t help but have reservations about him.  Yet inside the shed, which was practically falling apart around him, beams of light touched on bits of foil, wire, colorful beads, and ribbon.  Strings of blinking Christmas bulbs wound around the room.  Visitors report being light-headed, feeling overwhelmed, even out-of-breath.

Emery possessed books on science and physics yet depended on the elements for his energy fields, using ionic salts purchased from a pharmacy in North Platte, NE.  He befriended the pharmacist, and they became lifelong  friends.

Unfortunately, Emery succumbed to the cancer that took family members before him, and just as it seemed the healing machines he’d created to protect himself and others from illness would be dispersed and lost through an estate auction, his pharmacist friend bought the entire lot, including the shed, to preserve Emery’s works.

Over the course of several decades, Emery’s 600 ornate wire sculptures and 80 geometric paintings traveled the country and were eventually displayed in a New York gallery.  Pieces sold from $2,500 to $25,000. The remaining works, including the shed, was acquired by a foundation and donated to an art center in Wisconsin where they all remain today.

As far as the healing machines?  Did they really heal?  Well, they were indeed found to emit measurable electrical energy, but perhaps it was only the sheer rush of unexpected beauty that ripples through one’s body, giving him or her a dazzling hum of appreciation for Emery Blagdon’s passion.

Do learn more about Emery, you can watch a fascinating documentary about him:  http://netnebraska.org/interactive-multimedia/television/emery-blagdon-and-his-healing-machine

Have you ever known anyone who was a little odd? Crazy? Eccentric?

I can name several, but my favorite has to be the matronly elderly woman we all called the “Chicken Lady” in my hometown of North Platte.  I remember her still in her baggy coat and walking cane.  She truly seemed to love children and, eyes twinkling, always greeted them with loud squawks of “Bawk, bawk-bawk-bawk-BAWWKKK.”

I don’t recall ever hearing her talk normally to anyone, be it children or adults. Surely she knew words.  I don’t know – shrug – but I never knew if I should laugh or feel sorry for her.  One thing is certain, though.  I’ve never forgotten her!

Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer

by

Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer is a museum in Nebraska…not really near me because let’s face it, Nebraska is HUGE.

But it’s near enough that I’ve gotten there a couple of times.

It’s absolutely fascinating. A laid-out circle of buildings that have been brought it, that date to the 1800s.

I may write five blogs about it because there is SO MUCH. I could spend days there and just look and read and look and read.

But today I’m writing about the recreated Earthen Lodge built there.

In the early 1800s the Pawnee lived mainly in only a few towns. Six or seven.

In each town were 40 to 200 of these earthen lodges.

Each lodge held around 20 Pawnee and each village could contain from 800 to 3500 tribal members.

These were big towns.

The smallest one is larger than my hometown.

 

This first picture is a diagram of the lodge. It’s laid out to respect the power the Native people gave to the earth. It was called The Circle of Life. Both symbolic and literally the source of their family, their safety, their food, their shelter. Truly a circle of life for them.

For me, museums are most fun when there are lots of words. This picture above is for the Pawnee History that is celebrated with this earthen lodge. I hope you can read it. I spend more time READING in museums than looking at the objects contained there.

This is the side view of the lodge from outside. It’s exactly as you’d think it would be. A hole dug into a hill. Remember this is Nebraska. It gets cold! The insulation from dirt is excellent, though it still seems like it’s be a little cold to me. 

Here it is from the front, this is the entrance. It’s full size and we were able to go inside.

This is the inside edge of the lodge. You can see there is a layer of grassy seating off the ground. The Pawnee would sit here, around the fire, and could sleep here at night. A single lodge could house dozens of tribal members.

Here you can see the tree trunks that support the ceiling, even though it’s inside an earthen mount it is hollowed out and they need to keep the ceiling up. Note the opening in the ceiling. A fire was built in the center of the lodge and it would warm everyone, the smoke would rise up through the hole, they could cook over it and heat water to wash.

Stuhr Museum of the Prairie Pioneer. A fascinating slice of history in Minden Nebraska in the heart of the Nebraska prairie.

Mary Connealy

 

SETTING is a Character ~ by Tracy Garrett

by

It’s always a special day when one of our fillies return to the corral!  We’re so happy to have you with us again, Tracy!

=================================================================

Have you ever noticed how the setting of a book is an essential part of a story? There may be exceptions, but I don’t think you can pick up a story and drop it into another place—state, landscape, town versus farm. It just wouldn’t work well.

 

When I started writing JAMES, I decide to set it in Nebraska for several reasons. First, I needed the town of King’s Ford to be close enough to a mining area that my heroine could make the trip, but far enough away that it would be dangerous for her. Since there was gold mining in the Black Hills of the Dakota territory, I grabbed my atlas (yes, I still have one) and looked for the path she would have to take. It led me to a place near Chadron, Nebraska, a real town in the northwestern corner of the state.

 

The location gave me a wagon route to Cheyenne, Wyoming, that a wagon train might take, and a grassland that would support a yearly cattle drive to the railhead in North Platte. Perfect, I thought.

 

Trout Ranch near Chadron, NE
Chadron, NE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, I’d been through Nebraska once while on a tour with my college choir. We sang in Lincoln, then lit out for Colorado. All I really remember is that I could see the Rocky Mountains coming for hours and hours—it felt like days!

Eastern NE is flat!

So, my memory of Nebraska is flat. Research, however, made me realize that wasn’t the case for the area I’d chosen. Back to editing.

 

JAMES is set in the rolling hills of northwestern Nebraska. And those hills come into play in the story. So does the weather, but that’s another blog.

 

 

 

 

 

What do you think? Do you care where a story is set or does it not really matter to you?

Leave a comment and you’ll be entered to win one of two electronic copies of JAMES.

=================================================================

 

JAMES by Tracy Garrett

After five years leading the Lord’s flock in King’s Ford, Nebraska, The Reverend James Hathaway is used to the demands on his time. But nothing could prepare him to find a baby in a basket on his front step. He always expected to marry before becoming a father. Then a young widow agrees to help him learn to care for the child and he wonders if he hasn’t found his future.

 

Widow Esther Travers is still reeling over the loss of her newborn baby girl when she’s asked to help care for another baby. Vowing to get the little one off to a good start, she doesn’t plan to fall for the very handsome preacher, too.

EXCERPT

“Reverend! Reverend Hathaway!”

James heard Tad shouting long before he reached the cabin at the north end of King’s Ford, the town he’d called home for nearly five years now. The seven-year-old ran errands for many folks in town, though most often it was for the doctor. If Doctor Finney was sending for a preacher this early in the morning, it couldn’t be good news. James buttoned his vest and pulled on his frock coat then glanced in the small mirror hung beside the front door to be sure his collar was tucked in properly, then studied his face.

He looked tired. A wagon had creaked and rumbled past his home well before dawn and the noise had dragged him from a sound sleep. He’d been sitting at the table since then, trying to write his Sunday sermon, but inspiration hadn’t gotten out of bed with him. Ah, well. It was only Tuesday.

James glanced around his small home. The parsonage, if you could call the drafty, poorly lit cabin by so lofty a title, sat at the far north end of town. The church sat to the south of the parsonage, which meant the larger building did nothing to block the winter winds that howled down from the Dakota hills thirty or so miles away.

Deciding he wouldn’t scandalize any parishioner he passed, he lifted his hat from the small table under the mirror and opened the door. He was so focused on Tad that he nearly tripped over a basket left on his stoop.

“What on earth?”

“A basket.”

“Yes, Tad, I see that. Who left it here?” He immediately thought of the wagon that had awoken him. “Why didn’t they knock? I’ve been home since nightfall.”

Tad crept closer, lifted a corner of the cloth covering the contents, and jumped back like there was a snake inside. “Baby!” Tad yelled.

“Don’t play games, Tad. Tell me what’s…” James didn’t jump away, though he wanted to. “Merciful heavens, there’s a baby in here.”

BUY on Amazon!

Ebook – https://amzn.to/3cBUP2I

Paperback – https://amzn.to/2Uxodkz

Thanks for stopping by and happy reading!

Tracy