Why Write?

Over the years I've heard from many people who said a story I wrote for Upper Room or a Guide Posts series opened their eyes and changed their hearts. Or they said they keep one of my books of daily devotionals beside the bed and read a chapter every night. Some of these same readers are now asking, “Why did you switch from Christian writing to historical fiction?”

Well, I do have a very good reason. I wrote two books set in the Texas frontier in the late 1800s because I didn’t want the events that occurred in the lives of my great-grandmother and grandmother, as they carved out productive lives, to be forgotten. I tailored the books for young adults because many of them happened when my grandmother was a child and teenager. Also, my father was a child and teenager when my great-grandmother told the stories to him.

I was a busy wife and mother working fulltime at a bank before I ever heard the stories, and I didn’t write them down until my dad was deceased. When my mother was institutionalized with the ravages of advanced Alzheimer’s disease, Daddy came into my family’s home. With everyone away all day, he was lonely and anxious to talk when I got home. We sat on the patio sipping iced tea and smelling the white roses as he repeated the old family stories. I never knew any of the people he talked about with such clarity. They all died many years before my birth. But he brought them to life in my mind.

My great-grandparents came to Texas in 1859 determined to homestead 160 acres in Comanche County and develop the virgin soil into a profitable property. They, like other pioneers of the time, faced overwhelming odds before they reached this goal. They had to deal with the fickle Texas weather and the small bands of Comanche in the area. The fact that they succeeded was revealed through my father’s words. I grieved when told my great- grandmother’s favorite milk cow was killed by a cougar. I was awed to learn my great-uncle could talk to horses. When my grandmother was given her very own horse, I felt her pride and happiness. And I fell in love with the black and white cow dog, Buster, who played a large part in their lives.

In the beginning, my goal was to preserve these old family legends for the descendants of our courageous, hardworking family. However, members of my writing guild and critique groups convinced me that others had ancestors who experienced the same sorrows and victories, and they might like to read about them. And so, Under a Comanche Moon and Shadows of the Comanche were born.

The third in the trilogy, Comanche Paint, waits fallow in my mind. I need a co-author to bring it into print. Perhaps someday I’ll tell it to a grandchild who will give it life.