Hudson’s Bay Company

Woo-hoo!! Another book!

I’m thrilled to announce I sold my second book, this one a historical novel of early Oregon. My agent Rita Rosenkranz just closed the deal with the editor of my previous book, Erin Turner of Globe Pequot Press. It will come out in April 2016 under the TwoDot imprint, the same as A Place of Her Own. The photo above is a lithograph by J. H. Richardson showing Oregon City in the 1840s, the primary setting of the new book, tentatively entitled The Shifting Winds.

It’s the story of reluctant Oregon pioneer Jennie Haviland whose father decides, against her wishes, to take the family west to the wilderness of 1842 Oregon. Two men there vie for Jennie, one British, one American, as their two countries vie for the contested Oregon land. But Jennie wants choices of her own.

The Oregon City shown in the lithograph is the hometown Jennie would have known soon after her family arrived at the end of the long Oregon Trail.

I wrote this book some years ago when my focus first turned to stories of Oregon pioneers. After succeeding in selling the story of my pioneer great-great-grandmother, released in 2014, I brought this one out and gave it a polish, hoping my editor would like it too. And yay! She did! It has always been one of my favorites. I had such fun reworking it and look forward to sharing it now with readers.

Although A Place of Her Own reads like fiction it was sold as non-fiction. This new one brings me over to the world of fiction, in this case, fiction set in the midst of historic events with some real people, like legendary mountain man Joe Meek and Hudson’s Bay Company Chief Factor John McLoughlin. It falls solidly into the category of historical fiction.

Please join me in a cheer for book number two!! 🙂 🙂 🙂

COMMENT

Elkton, Oregon, puts on a big Fort Umpqua Days event every year on Labor Day Weekend in celebration of the town’s history.This year it’s Saturday and Sunday, August 30 and 31.The British Hudson’s Bay Company built Fort Umpqua in 1836 near where Elkton sprouted a few years later. It was the company’s southernmost fort in the Oregon Territory in the days when they essentially ruled the area, chasing the lucrative fur trade–before all those American pioneers started trekking west over the Oregon Trail.

The first fort burned in 1851, and a flood in 1861 washed away what was left of it. A few years ago citizens of the area decided to reconstruct the fort on a site just downriver from the original, and the work continues today with new buildings going up inside the wooden palisade walls, with considerable effort made to keep things authentic. Now the HBC flag flies again.

So, during Fort Umpqua Days we celebrate with a parade and a history pageant, a craft fair, and other events. I’ve enjoyed serving on the writing team for the pageant the last few years, in which the history is told with a bit of humor and a bit of truth. And this year I’ll have an outdoor booth for selling and signing my book about one of those intrepid American pioneers–my own ancestor Martha Poindexter Maupin.

Last year kids came into the fort grounds to learn how people at the old fort cooked and kept gardens and washed their clothes, which was probably a whole lot more fun for the kids than for those guys at the original fort. Inside, there are furs and stories aplenty to whet the imagination.