Sunday Drive in the Country

My next release, coming April 20th, is set in 1888 where I grew up. The countryside of my childhood--dirt roads snaking through thick woods of pines, oaks, and cedars, wild blackberry bushes and plum trees. Hidden along the way were decaying barns and farm houses that invigorated my imagination.

Maybe you're old enough to remember when the family would pile into the car for a Sunday afternoon drive in the country. That experience is now lost, like the ghosts those old houses held. This old house reminded me of the abandoned farmhouse my family would stop by to gather black walnuts from the trees that stood in back. I think my sisters told me it was haunted to keep me from exploring, and it worked. I was sure the ghosts were watching us. Incidentially, the bobby pins of the era were useful for picking out the nuts, a tiresome chore, but goodness, how delicious were the black walnut cakes my mother baked.

Have you ever sucked the nectar from honeysuckles? I have. Not from the small vine flowers but the wild, tall bushes with large honeysuckles. Along one of the dirt roads was a field of such bushes, and we would pick huge bouquets. The stems were long and thick, and the flowers would last the whole week, filling the house with the sweet perfume.

Even during the heat of July, the thick woods kept the temperature cool and pleasant. We also stopped to harvest blackberries and plums, not only to eat our fill on the way home, but to make jams and jellies. None of the land was posted back during those days, and fortunately, the fruit bushes and trees grew close to the roads. One didn't venture too far into the woods during the summer because snakes were as prevalent as the berries.

I learned to drive a car on one of these dirt roads in a car that look like this one. You didn't have to worry about staying inside the lane of these roads. There was only one and the ditches were unforgiving.

The only way I could explore those old roads of my childhood was in my mind. The countryside has changed, the roads either closed or paved. All the old buildings torn down or fallen to dust on their own. It didn't matter, since my book is set a hundred years prior to the land I remember. But it still gave me a flavor of the setting. Be on the lookout for Escaped, Book 4 of Intrigue under Western Skies.

  Juliette Kendal has vowed to protect her siblings from their abusive step-father after their mother’s death. When she finds him attacking her younger sister, Annie, she accidentally kills him.  

  Jake Gresham is known as a fun-loving, careless cowboy, as good at finding trouble as he is roping cattle. So far, he’s managed to avoid God and decent women. But on a scouting trip for his boss, he steps in a bear trap in a South Georgia swamp. Facing certain death changes his outlook, and Juliette, who fights tenaciously to save his life, changes his opinion of women.

  When Jake asks Juliette to marry him and take her family with him when he returns to his Nebraska ranch, she sees it as an escape. But she can’t marry Jake without confessing to him and God the secret buried in her backyard.