The basic structure of my book Promise, which will come out next year (2020) follows four families in America from the 1700s into the Twentieth Century. From their arrival in colonial Pennsylvania and Virginia these families expanded southward and then west, along with the nation’s growth.
Their stories are of covered wagons, rattlesnakes, wars and peace, circuit riding ministers, cotton plantations, outlaws, prospectors, log cabins, slavery, raids and battles, social activism, one-room schools, the Sierras, horses, oxen, scalpings, plagues, the Transcontinental Railroad, turkeys, osteopathy and home remedies, floods and blizzards and many adventures of life pushing across the beautiful wilderness of the United States.
These were just average people living their lives in the time of expansion and facing the problems and opportunities that came with a new nation’s growth. They were descendants of the Davies family—whose adventures are in my books, A Perfect Plan and Rule!—and the Atkinson family—descended from the Powells and Praters of A Good Place, the Still family of North Carolina, which included the founder of osteopathy, and the Yeargins of Cherokee County, Alabama.
Promise is the final volume of Helena’s Stories. It’s a big project with lot of research and will bring to life times, places, and events we learned of in school, movies, and books (and TV!). As in the other books of the series, Promise will be end-noted, as accurate to time and place as possible, and offer supportive historical information in notes at the books’ end.
The bits ‘n pieces of nifty information that arise in the research but don’t make it per se into the book are the triggers for my quarterly newsletter, Thoughts on History. I send it out via email and also have linked the issues to this site (see the Menu above). So, this project has become a whole, big package of history on a personal level.
Though I’m still not halfway through my first draft of Promise, the other day, going over what I had so far, I realized that much of the story that develops over the about 150 years takes place in wagons or other vehicles. It just happened that way, but it sure feels American to be on wheels.
I hope you’ll join me through the newsletter or my (much too infrequent) blogs as my book makes the journey westward. The vehicle might be bumpy, but the scenery’s terrific and the folks are, well, real genuine folks.
Carolyn M. Osborne Writes 