Blog Archives
My #1 Most Read Post–A Mysterious Woman Who Gave Her Life for Liberty
I discovered an astounding statistic the other day. You know I often write blogs about tough, stubborn, gritty women who beat the odds, improvised, adapted, overcame and helped build the country we love. Well, the #1 most read blog I’ve written is, of course, about one of these women–one from the Revolutionary War. Over 15,000 hits! Hmmm. Maybe I’m writing in the wrong genre!
Anyway, if you haven’t yet, check out my take on identifying the heroic and mysterious Agent 355! What a woman. Let me know if you agree with my theory on who she was!
One of the Coolest Things About Being Indie — Writing for YOU!
Voila! I went back in and revised and expanded this story and you get to see what pretty little white missionary had an impact on Long Feather. To Love and to Honor will be FREE for the next several days so you can read again without paying for it. I hope you’ll pick it up and let me know what you think about Long Feather and Miss Laurie!Henry Long Feather leaned against a tree and studied the white woman. She taught the children from the Bar FB three days a week and often brought them out of the little shack Fairbanks had built for a school. This was a rare thing for a white teacher to do, but she—Laurie Wilcox—was different from most whites Long Feather knew.
She was older, like him. Perhaps fifty summers or so, but youth still lived in her smooth skin and ready smile. Everything about her was light and delicate and fascinating to him. From her long, golden braid that gleamed even when there was no sun, to her slight nose, to her haunting eyes—the icy blue of a stream in winter. But they warmed him, like now.
She raised her gaze over the heads of her students and beamed at him. “Mr. Long Feather. Come to join us for a lesson?”
A dozen little cowboy hats and twin braids all swung round to him, showing young faces bright with curiosity. Shoving his hands into his pants pockets, he pushed off the tree and strode over to them more than happy to forget the event with the bull. “Not today, Mrs. Wilcox. I have come for Joseph.” He tapped the top of a brown hat and the freckled-face boy of eight beneath it grimaced up at him. “Yes, you. Your father has need of you in the blacksmith barn. He asked me to send you over.”
“Aw,” the boy moaned, kicking at a dirt clod.
“That’s perfect timing. We just finished our lesson.” Mrs. Wilcox snapped her Bible shut. “You go on, Joseph. Don’t keep your father waiting. The rest of you,” she surveyed the ring of a dozen or so students, “Spelling test tomorrow. Make sure you study.”
The children gave her their own collective groan and drifted away, a few darting for trouble at various places on the ranch. When they were gone, their teacher rocked on her heels and smiled up at Long Feather, an awkward kind of sign that he couldn’t read. But there was much he did not understand about Mrs. Wilcox.
“What kept you busy today, Mr. Long Feather?”
He shrugged, not quite prepared to share all the details of his day. “The boys brought in a couple of Indian ponies Fairbanks wants me to train to the saddle. They are willing. It will not be much work.” Unlike this new task of training Joel Chapman. “And you, Mrs. Wilcox? What does a teacher do with herself when the students have gone?”
“Please, call me Miss Laurie. Everyone does.” He nodded, acquiescing to her request and she continued. “I have my own homework—some papers to grade.” She bit her bottom lip and tilted her head in a way that made him want to brush his hand down her cheek. “Could I see them? The Indian ponies.”
“Surely.” The answer slipped out before he’d had a chance to think about it. A missionary, Miss Laurie was liked on the ranch, but the hands kept their distance, as if her religion might be catching. Long Feather harbored no such fear. Instead, he wondered what they would say about her strolling with an Indian if she wasn’t preaching at him.
She scrunched her forehead at him. “You don’t want to show me?”
Her perceptiveness caught him off guard. “No, it is not that. You are a white woman.”
“Yes, I was born with the affliction.”
Her joke took a moment to light on his brain, but when it did, he offered her a reserved chuckle. “You don’t understand—”
“I understand perfectly, Mr. Long Feather. And as a child of God, I love all people. I can’t help what others think about that. I don’t let their prejudices dictate with whom I stroll.”
He pushed a hand over his mouth, sighed, and gestured back toward the way he’d come. “After you.”
Hmmm. What trouble awaits this relationship? I hope you’ll read and find out. Get your copy today!
New Release Embarrasses Author’s Teenage Children. Noooooo…
A lot of you know my newest release, Hell-Bent on Blessings, is based on the actual pioneer lady Harriet Pullen. She was one tough chick. While her life story took place in the Klondike, I relocated her to gold rush California to suit my fictional requirements and changed a few details about her, but basically, this is the beginning of her destiny.
I also decided to play with the facts a bit when it came to her children. The two teenage boys in Hell-Bent are inspired by my own two boys, Whit and Wyatt. Yes, I have immortalized my sons in one of their mother’s books, MUCH to their dismay and humiliation. As a beta reader said upon learning of this, “Good. Now your job is done.” Some mothers pinch cheeks or hug their teenagers to embarrass them. I write them. LOL! 
On a more serious note, in prepping for this story, I discovered some fabulous research material. If you like history, allow me to recommend two amazing books: The Age of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the New American Dream by H.W. Brands and They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush by Joan Levy. I found the one by Brands to be more compelling. I listened to it as an audiobook and there were a few times I didn’t want to get out of the car because I wanted to hear what happened next!
While my book is a stand-alone story, it is part of the Brides of Blessings collection. I hope you’ll check out all the books by best-selling and award-winning authors Lynne Winchester, Kari Trumbo, Mimi Milan, Dallis Adams, and Danica Favorite. I truly think you’ll enjoy them. And I’d like to invite you to interact with all of us in our facebook readers group. If you have questions or comments about the series, we’d love to hear from you!
You can certainly get your copy of Hell-Bent on Blessings here. Thank you!
Though she be but little, she is fierce.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream Act 3, Scene 2
And when she is froward, peevish, sullen, sour,
And not obedient to his honest will,
What is she but a foul contending rebel
And graceless traitor to her loving lord?
I am ashamed that women are so simple
To offer war where they should kneel for peace,
Or seek for rule, supremacy, and sway
When they are bound to serve, love, and obey.
The Taming of the Shrew Act 5, Scene 2
—Shakespeare
How Many Lives Did Mary Slocumb’s Midnight Ride for Love Save?
by Heather Frey Blanton
For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.
Judy Garland
We all know love can drive a person to insane actions, casting caution to the wind, striving only to get to the person we love no matter the cost. Just twenty seconds of insane courage? For some, that’s enough. But not for Mary Slocumb.
Mary’s husband was a soldier serving in a North Carolina regiment during the Revolutionary War. In February of 1776, Ezekiel headed off to fight the British in the Battle of Moore’s Creek Bridge near Wilmington. Plagued with an unshakable feeling of doom, she went to bed that night and dreamed she saw her husband’s body, bloody, lifeless, and wrapped in his cloak.
Mary awoke, leaped from her bed, saddled her horse and rode hell-bent-for-leather, thirty-one miles, in the dark, through fields and swamps seeking her beloved. By daylight she heard the thunder of cannons and raced towards the sound. Mary stumbled upon a group of about twenty wounded soldiers hidden among a grove of Oaks. She immediately dismounted and soon discovered a body wrapped in her husband’s cloak. Upon closer examination, however, she realized the soldier was not her husband, nor was he dead, but he was suffering from a traumatic, very bloody head injury. Mary washed the man’s wound, dressed it, and gave him some water using a gourd she carried on her own saddle. She then spent the rest of the day nursing the other wounded soldiers. Hours passed, though, with no sign of her husband.
Then, in her own words, “I looked up and my husband, as bloody as a butcher…stood before me.”
Imagine her joy.
Imagine his shock.
What Mary and Ezekiel both did that day cannot be underestimated. Ezekiel was in the troop that chased the British back across the bridge and sent them skedaddling home to Cornwallis. This one, early victory ignited the hearts of Southern patriots and recruitment in the coastal areas of North and South Carolina and Virginia leaped!
For her part, who knows how many soldiers would have died if not for Mary showing up to nurse them? Some of you may be reading this today because of her crazy ride to find her soulmate!
Two people in love. Two people who may well have changed the course of the Revolutionary War.
P.S. Mary’s gourd is on display in the NC Museum of History and there is a status of her at Moore’s Creek Bridge.
