A New Novel Takes Shape: Love, Loss, and Survival on the Chisholm Trail

I recently mentioned a new novel I'm working on. It's not like I needed another one; I have several unfinished books already, but when the inspiration strikes, I am powerless to turn away. This is an especially compelling story set in post-Civil War Oklahoma, following a Chickasaw plantation owner who has to navigate that dramatic time of change. It is my first historical fiction, and the convergence of history in that particular area is amazing.

Navigating the loss of Indian treaties for supporting the South during the war, managing thousands of acres of farm and range land when your slaves are being emancipated; a smallpox epidemic that kills his wife and infant son, leaving him to raise two young daughters... then the Comanche raid of June 1866. Through that event, he ends up rescuing a young woman from Texas, captured in the raids, and herself having lost both parents to smallpox. To protect her herds and property, she comes to live with him to help with his daughters.

Then in 1867, the cattle drives up the Chisholm Trail come right through his range. I just started this week and already have 140 pages of research. Stay tuned!!