Villains! Loves Undoing by Gabrielle Meyer - Backcountry Brides

[Angela here, and for the month of may we are having have a little fun here every Wednesday as

authors from Barbour's Backcountry Brides collection share a little about their villains! I'll let Gabrielle take it from here:]

Love on Colonial America’s Frontier

Travel into Colonial America where eight women seek love, but they each know a future husband requires the necessary skills to survive in the backcountry. Living in areas exposed to nature’s ferocity, prone to Indian attack, and cut off from regular supplies, can hearts overcome the dangers to find lasting love?

My story, Love’s Undoing, begins in what would one day become central Minnesota on the banks of the Upper Mississippi River in 1792 at a Scottish fur post. Abi is the daughter of a Scottish fur trader and an Indian mother. Early in the story, she leaves the post and travels to Montreal to find her sister. She and the hero, Henry, are accompanied by a Chippewa guide, Migizi, and the man her father hopes she’ll marry, Robert. She longs to get away from the confines and expectations of the fur post and see what the world has to offer.

The villain of the story is Robert who wants to marry Abi and keep her at the fur post. He doesn’t understand her desire to see the world and tries to thwart her dream. His enemy is Henry, who is his complete opposite. At every turn, he tries to belittle Henry and point out his flaws to Abi. When Abi’s world comes crashing down around her, Robert swoops in to take her away from Henry and Montreal. He appears to be the hero, but he’s only returning Abi to the life she doesn’t want. In the end, Henry saves the day and becomes the real hero Abi deserves.

Gabrielle Meyer lives in central Minnesota on the banks of the Upper Mississippi River with her husband and four children. As an employee of the Minnesota Historical Society, she fell in love with the rich history of her state and enjoys writing fictional stories inspired by real people, places, and events. You can learn more about her and her upcoming releases by visiting her website www.gabriellemeyer.com or her Facebook page www.Facebook.com/AuthorGabrielleMeyer.

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Villains! The Counterfeit Tory by Shannon McNear – Backcountry Brides

[Angela here, and for the next month we are going to have a little fun here every Wednesday as

authors from Barbour's Backcountry Brides collection share a little about their villains! I'll let Shannon McNear take it from here:]

I wrote an entire post on Colonial Quills about William Cunningham, the infamous Tory leader, and his reign of terror across the South Carolina backcountry in the fall of 1781. Victorian era writers styled him “Bloody Bill” Cunningham, but several others earned the same moniker. Some of them even deserved it. By all accounts, Cunningham certainly did, when I’ve questioned the same about others.

Cunningham was son, nephew, and cousin to staunch loyalists at the beginning of the Revolutionary War, but being the strong-minded, contrary sort, he joined the rebel side. (That’s loyalist terminology for what we call patriots.) When refused a promotion he thought he deserved and assigned to a location he didn’t care for, Cunningham attempted to resign from the Continental Army but was court martialed for insubordination and sentenced to a whipping.

Sent home in disgrace and facing threats on his life, he fled to St. Augustine, Florida. Two years later, word reached him that patriot militia had turned his family out of their house, treating his aged father roughly and whipping his disabled brother so severely that he died. Furious, Cunningham returned to South Carolina on foot and went straight to the patriot leader responsible for his family’s suffering, where as the story goes, he shot the man at dinner, in front of his family.

Afterward, Cunningham’s exploits for the British soon earned him the rank of major and later, captain, and he’s recorded as being present at the Battle of King’s Mountain. Notably fearless and an expert horseman, he was so much admired by his peers that even his enemies speak of him in tones of awe, decades later.

The truly chilling accounts, however, start just after the surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown, which took place October 1781. A series of raids against the patriot populace quickly became a campaign of vengeance on those who had committed the gravest offenses against the Tories or their families. Cunningham’s habit of pinning down his enemies, then deliberately putting them to death with a single-minded fury that is legendary even today, puts him head and shoulders above others in infamy. To my knowledge, no other figure is attributed with such habitual, wholesale slaughter.

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Backcountry Brides:  https://amzn.to/2GwbyFb

And the prequel, The Highwayman, is now available as a standalone:  https://amzn.to/2GA53S5

After more than two decades in the South, Shannon McNear now makes her home on the windy northern plains with her husband, four of their eight children, two German Shepherds, four cats, several chickens, and a noisy flock of guinea fowl. She serves in worship and youth ministry, and has been writing novel-length fiction since age 15. Her first novella, Defending Truth, from A Pioneer Christmas Collection, was a 2014 RITA® nominee. When not sewing, researching, or leaking story from her fingertips, she enjoys being outdoors, basking in the beauty of the Dakota prairies.

shannonmcnear.com

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