My Story Inspiration for Following Faith

By Jacqui Nelson

What's the inspiration for my stories? History, loss, hope, adventure, love, and quite often horses. 

Last month I shared my Story Inspiration page (a page that I've included in the back of all of my books) for my first book, Between Heaven & Hell. Today I'm sharing the Story Inspiration page for the sequel to that story...

FOLLOWING FAITH 

Story Inspiration page ~ from the back of the book

Following Faith came to life after I was asked to write a short story for the historical romance anthology Journey of the Heart featuring forms of Old West transportation.

I’d always planned to give Hannah’s brother, Eagle Feather (first seen in Between Heaven & Hell) his own story. Oregon became the setting since that was where Hannah had settled, and I wanted his path to reconnect with Hannah’s. 

Next came the decision of what transportation to use. Train, boat, stagecoach, wagon, or just plain old horseback—which I never find plain when every horse is unique. A childhood memory of a very unique horse and a much-loved book sprang to mind. 

San Domingo, the Medicine Hat Stallion first published in 1972 by Marguerite Henry (with illustrations by Robert Lougheed) was re-published as Peter Lundy and the Medicine Hat Stallion in 1972 (when it became a TV movie). Set in Pony Express-era Wyoming, the story’s core is the bond between a boy and a pinto horse with a very specific and rare color pattern—a mostly white body, neck, and head with a darker color that covers the top of the horse’s head and ears like a bonnet or a hat. 

Native legend said such a horse held the medicine to protect its rider from harm. The horse was greatly coveted and often stolen by those who wished to safeguard their—or a loved one’s—life.

FOLLOWING FAITH

Oregon Territory 1852

Can a single day together on horseback 
change your life forever?

Labeled a harlot and expelled from a remote logging camp and her only employment teaching children, Faith Featherby embarks on a journey to return a stolen spirit horse to the little girl whose photograph she found hidden in the horse’s riding blanket. 

Orphaned young and stifled by a lifelong shyness, Faith has only her education as a schoolmistress and her memories of her mother’s stories. She’s not an experienced rider, but a Medicine Hat horse—alleged to have the sacred power to protect its rider—might be her best hope for surviving the wilderness... until an Osage warrior rides out of the mist. 

Scarred by a brutal past, the warrior challenges Faith to follow a new path where belief in yourself and your partner, be they horse or man, can lead to a triumph of the heart.

Follow a path. Find a partner. Fight for a future together.

Click here to read an excerpt on my website.

~ * ~

THE LONESOME HEARTS SERIES 

Following Faith is book 2 in my Lonesome Hearts series, which follows the frontiersmen and women who meet on the Oregon Trail and afterward. Each story includes one or more of the characters from the other books but is also a standalone read.

Click here to see a summary of all of my books on one page.

Hope you enjoyed my writing inspiration and that you have a fun Friday full of your favorite things ❤️

~ * ~

Download my FREE STORY Rescuing Raven

Join me on 

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Pinterest, my Website,
my Cowboy Kisses page 

Follow me on 

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Read my Wild Women of the West blog posts 

My Story Inspiration for Between Heaven & Hell

By Jacqui Nelson

I've included a Story Inspiration page in the back of each of my books, but today I thought...why not share them everywhere and start with Cowboy Kisses? And why not start with my first book as well? 

So here we go! 

 

BETWEEN HEAVEN & HELL 

Story Inspiration page ~ from the back of the book

Between Heaven & Hell was the first novel I wrote (and the second I published), so you can imagine how honored I was when it won both the 2010 Romance Writers of America® Golden Heart® for Historical Romance and the 2014 Laramie® for Western Romance Drama.

The inspiration for Hannah and Paden’s story came from many directions. First was the astounding idea of traveling 2,170 miles (3,490 km) on foot, wagon, or horseback but also leaving behind everything you knew—family, friends, the familiarity of home, the disappointments of the past. All for the hope of a better future. Few people crossed the trail more than once as Paden did. From the 1830s the Oregon Trail and its many offshoots were used by over 400,000 travelers. To put that into perspective, America’s population was 23 million in 1850, the year of my story.

Attack by anyone including Native Americans (whose land was being taken and abused) was my initial worry for my travelers. It was an eye-opener to learn that disease posed the most danger. Cholera killed 3% of all travelers in the epidemic years from 1849 to 1855. Other common causes of death included hypothermia, drowning in river crossings, being run over by wagons, and accidental shootings.

So how to protect yourself? From the early days, Native tribes believed tattoos held protective powers. Symbols were tribe and individual specific because if everyone’s life story is unique, then a tattoo (and its guardian spirit) should be unique as well.

BETWEEN HEAVEN & HELL 

Fort Leavenworth, Kansas – 1850

Hannah knows one thing the moment she enters Fort Leavenworth—she’s arrived in Hell. But inside the fort is the means to a new life, a position as a scout on a wagon train bound for the Western Territories. All Hannah has to do is convince the wagon master, Paden Callahan, she’s the right person for the job.

After his wife was murdered by the Comanche, Paden let his work as a Texas Ranger consume him. Now he wants nothing more than to forget his past and disappear into the West. Unfortunately, the one man he can’t refuse has asked him to guide a wagon train full of tenderfoots across thousands of miles of Indian land. But Paden’s greatest challenge turns out to be Hannah, a woman his heart won’t allow him to ignore even though she’s been raised by an enemy he hates.

On a trail full of danger, will he guide her to heaven or hell?

Click here to read an excerpt on my website.

~ * ~

THE LONESOME HEARTS SERIES 

Between Heaven & Hell is book 1 in my Lonesome Hearts series, which follows the frontiersmen and women who meet on the Oregon Trail and afterward. Each story includes one or more of the characters from the other books but is also a standalone read.

Click here to see a summary of all of my books on one page.

Hope you enjoyed my writing inspiration and that you all have a very happy Friday! 

~ * ~

Download my FREE STORY Rescuing Raven

Join me on 

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
Pinterest, my Website,
my Cowboy Kisses page 

Follow me on 

Amazon, BookBub, Goodreads 

Read my Wild Women of the West blog posts 

Their name is Numu by Paty Jager

I've been on the Keto diet since before Christmas so is it any wonder that I want to write a blog post that starts with a sweetener? LOL

In January, my husband and I were in Northern Nevada. He'd been told about a Native American museum. Pyramid Lake Museum. It has a wonderful display of how the Paiute Indians lived and survived in northern Nevada, southern Idaho, and southeastern Oregon.

I not only learned about how they are keeping their heritage alive, but also how they lived. The first thing that caught my eye was Mountain Sugar Cane. I had never heard of it before. But there were three different photos I took that showed how it was used.

Crystals were deposited on the leaves of the plant and the women would shake the plant over a tightly woven winnowing basket and gather the crystals that they used to prepare food.

It was also used for candy. The plant was cut at the base and propped up at a slant to drain the sap from the plant. The sap formed a taffy like candy. 

 

I thought it was interesting that they used the shaft to make arrows. The canes shown weren't very straight. And "aha" a little further along there was a stone which I can't find a photo of. I was sure I took the photo, anyway, it was big enough to hold in a hand, and it had a groove in it the length of the stone. It was used to "sand" the shafts and make them straight. It was something I hadn't seen before in a Native American museum/display. 

On to more food related items: The first has pine nuts from the pinion pine. This is a flat stone and a hand held stone they used to grind the nuts.

This was used to grind berries and meats into a course flour or meal. A food similar to pemmican. (salmon and berries that the Nez Perce make)

And there were their mortar and pestals.

The Native Americans were resourceful people. They used everything they could find to make their lives better. I found it fascinating that the sagebrush I find unique, they used for many things, one of which was fiber to make clothing, shoes, and rope. 

They also used deer sinew, tule, Indian hemp to make snares and ropes.

This is the one that blew my mind. They used stinging nettle to make a cord. Now it doesn't bother me but my brother would breakout all over if he touched the plant.

They twined Indian hemp and sagebrush bark together and then used that to weave clothing. If you can read the note in the photo above, it said it was interesting to note that men rarely used this clothing. No kidding! It would rub the skin raw, I would think. I guess the women and children needed to stay warm and maybe their skin toughened to the contact. 

I love pottery and these two vessels that were woven of willow and covered with pine pitch look like thrown pots to me. I love them!

The other thing that fascinates me is Native American beadwork. It's beautiful, intricate, and is designed to tell a story. 

 Notice the beaded collar.This was something the woman made that was special to them. They wore them for dancing and special occasions. The Paiutes are very good at beading and still enjoy doing it. There were some gorgeous beaded earrings in their gift shop. I purchased a pair. Hard to pass up such wonderful workmanship.

If you ever get to northern Nevada, I suggest you check out this museum. They even had a thirty minute video that told about their past and what they are doing in the present to keep their culture alive.

And why did I title this Their name is Numu? Because that is the name the Paiute call themselves. While we moved in and renamed them, just like the Nez Perce call themselves Nimiipuu, the Paiute are the Numu.

Paty Jager is an award-winning author of 43 novels, 8 novellas, and numerous anthologies of murder mystery and western romance. All her work has Western or Native American elements in them along with hints of humor and engaging characters. Paty and her husband raise alfalfa hay in rural eastern Oregon. Riding horses and battling rattlesnakes, she not only writes the western lifestyle, she lives it.

blog / website /  Facebook / Paty's Posse / Goodreads / Twitter / Pinterest / Bookbub

She Chose the War Path

by Heather Blanton

Sometimes when I do research, I discover fascinating individuals who led gloriously exciting lives and then retired in peace, children and grandchildren sitting at their feet. The happily ever after. The ending we’d all like. Truth is, though, sometimes a hero has her moment early on and from there it’s not a very pretty spiral downward.

This is my impression of the life of Apache warrior woman Dahteste (pronounced ta-DOT-say).

Born around 1860 she chose her path as a warrior. The Apache let you do that. A fairly open-minded society, you could be a warrior, a homemaker, a medicine man, whatever, as long as you worked at it and could deliver. Dahteste was known for her beauty, but she was also clearly respected for her fighting, riding, hunting, and shooting skills. She was fast and she was mean. No man challenged her light-heartedly. And she proved her worth repeatedly on raids with the Apache. In fact, she rode with Cochise (you might remember him. He led an uprising against the U.S. government that started in 1861 and didn’t end until ’72). Remarkably, Dahteste was barely a teenager! Her fighting didn’t end, however, with Cochise’s acceptance of a peace treaty. She continued it by riding with Geronimo. Who knows how many “white-eyes” lost their lives to her rifle?

Geronimo surrendered in 1886. Dahteste over the years had picked up quite a bit of English, had even served as a cavalry scout for a time, so she negotiated the great chief’s surrender. Her reward? She was arrested and shipped to a prison in Florida where she stayed for eight years. Then she was moved to the military prison at Fort Sill, OK where she was a guest for nineteen years. During her time as a resident of the US Army’s military prison system, she survived pneumonia and tuberculosis. I suspect she survived much more than that.

During this time she divorced her husband Ahnandia (one of Geronimo’s original warriors) and within a few years married fellow inmate and former Army scout Coonie. The couple was released in 1919 and moved to the Mescalero Apache Reservation in New Mexico.

Dahteste, reports say, never spoke English again and wore only beautiful beaded native clothing. She left her long black hair down and unbraided, but always brushed. She was a proud Apache woman who walked with her chin up.

Though she did, indeed, retire with children and grandchildren around her feet, none of them were hers by blood, and she was not generally known to smile much. I hope she spent her final years enjoying peace and happiness, but I don’t get that sense. I think Dahteste was a survivor and she did so with more grim determination than optimism.

THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN, NEW YORK

When I was growing up in New York, there was a rather forbidding museum in the no-man’s-land between the affluent upper east side and Harlem, before the latter had been gentrified.  While I visited it a couple of times, it was not the sort of place you would want to frequent:  dusty displays of buckskins and beads notated with typed descriptions you had to strain to read.  Not so today.

The NY branch of the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian is now situated in  the magnificent Alexander Hamilton Customs House, a Beaux Arts building close to the ferries to Staten Island, Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, and therefore an excellent addition to a day of sightseeing if you happen to be in New York. The museum, which concerns all the Americas, consists of three main galleries branching off a central rotunda.This rotunda was where the customs officials sat—prior to regulation, charging whatever they felt like charging for the various goods brought into the country! The south gallery lodges the permanent collection, Infinity of Nations, housing seven hundred Native works of historic importance. 

Dress & corn husk pouch, Walla Walla

Sauk

The east and west galleries have temporary exhibits of both Native history and contemporary culture.  The exhibit I found of particular interest during my recent visit was Native Fashion Now, displaying everything from street clothing to haute couture, yet still bound to Native identity and tradition. There is also the Diker Pavilion, which at the time of my last visit housed Circle of Dance displaying mannequins in dance costumes from Native people, and an auditorium for film, lectures and concerts including ‘Native Sounds,’ a children’s festival and a Native art market in December.

Couture dress by Orlando Dugi, Dine/Navajo

Sneakers by Wolf Chucks

The highlight of my visit, however, was the two, hour-long tours I joined, free, with not even tipping permitted.  The first was a cultural tour concentrating on the different use of masks in different cultures, how they make an individual into another person or animal, and what such transition can mean or be used for. These cultural tours change depending on the docent. The second tour was of the building itself.  Since this was once the Customs House taking in between $500,000 and one million dollars a day, it reflects the sort of wealth that could represent.  There is rare marble throughout, and the very best artisans were brought in from all over the world to work on the building in ways that would be difficult to replicate today. 

For instance, the ceiling dome of glass is not a raised dome at all but a trompe l’oeil made to look like a dome.  

We were shown the office of the Collector of Customs, a post appointed by the President and once said to be the fourth most powerful position in the country because for 125 years, customs duty was the main source of government income. Now used for events, the focus of the office was the woodwork screen by Louis Comfort Tiffany, the only known woodwork of this renowned  glassmaker.

While the museum does represent all indigenous peoples of the Americas, for me it is good to have the association with our own first nations right here.  Keep it in mind if you visit New York.   http://nmai.si.edu/visit/newyork/