A Light in the Wilderness has launched! And what a grand time we've had sharing Letitia's incredible story of resilience and the power of imagination to carry one over challenging obstacles. Seventy or so people found themselves at Powell's Books in Portland (where I sauntered in 15 minutes late but thinking I was a half an hour early! People were forgiving). As always, I learned things that evening from audience members including that tow linen, which Letitia wore, was called "Slave linen" by many. It was an inferior form of cloth and once again I was struck at how even the clothes we wear make political statements.  

Our opening event in southern Oregon where Letitia spent her later years, welcomed 200 people at the Douglas County Library where the Johns family attended (they've been the keepers of Letitia's story in that region) along with family of those who have the graveyard property where Letitia and her son are buried. Later, at the Benton County Museum, the two researchers, Dr. Bob Zybach and Janet Meranda stood in for me as Jerry and I attended the memorial for our granddaughter's 26 year-old-husband, Tony Barajas. I am grateful to the Genealogy Association and Museum who sponsored that event and warmly welcomed Janet and Bob. Death occurs in all our lives and is a constant reminder of the preciousness of life.

The next day we gathered at the Soap Creek Schoolhouse in the region of Letitia and Davey Carson's land claims. Truman Price played his fiddle and sang a tune he wrote about Letitia. We spilled over to both porches at the schoolhouse and even had a couple of children arrive in period dress.

The reviews have been strong, kind, even soaring at times. Publisher's Weekly used terms like "indelible and intriguing...persuasive and poignant." Blogger Jennifer Slattery in her Novel Reviews Blog wrote this: "In Letitia we see an authentic mix of fear and courage, of conviction and insecurity, coupled with a determination that propels her forward. And with each step forward, she fights to leave her bitterness behind, dropping it down before it even has a chance to take root. For hatred is a type of slavery she refuses to embrace." I love that insight about hatred and its relationship to slavery...present day slavery of the human spirit..

My first book group in Pennsylvania that I "visited" with by speaker phone shared how much they loved the book but even more, Letitia, how inspiring this African-American woman is. And they asked if more was coming about her. Happily I could tell them of the two researchers - Bob and Janet -who initially brought this story to me. They are making great progress on their non-fiction title that will present the factual history as they've uncovered it, especially about what happened after my novel ended. Readers now can visit their site Friends of Letitia Carson or my website under the book title where additional historical information is available.

A friend and sister writer Louise Hawkins wrote in a recent email: "I doled the story out to myself in bedtime bites. I went to sleep thinking about Letitia and woke up thinking about her. Finally yesterday I devoured the rest of the book, even as I sat with a patch over one post-cataract-surgery eye. Thank you for bringing her story, with your deft fiction writing talent, especially the dialogue, to life." There can be no higher praise for a writer than that her characters become real as the wind on our faces, that we think of them even when not reading and that our imagination is stimulated to carry on their strengths within our own lives as we gather them to our memories as friends. 

Falling From Horses by Molly Gloss. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2014

"The only stories worth a writer's blood and sweat and tears," said William Faulkner in 1954 when he accepted the Pulitzer Prize, "are stories of the human heart in conflict with itself." Every book of Portland author Molly Gloss meets that expectation and none greater than her latest Falling From Horses. The emcee who introduced Molly at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers convention in September said she was afraid to read the book too fast, wanting it to go on and on. And author Karen Jo Fowler wrote "I read Falling From Horses in two gulps." Both women describe my experience. I interrupted my reading with another book, hoping to make Molly's last. And then after about the 15th chapter I just read into the night. I finished it while on the ferry between Victoria BC and Port Angeles, WA. Yes, tears were streaming down my face and Jerry reached over to hug my shoulders to him. Even now when I think of that book and the ending I am in tears. Good tears, satisfied tears, thoughtful ones reading of lives that could have been and live on now in reader's hearts. There is one disclaimer I'll offer and that's the images of horse treatment in old Hollywood being hard to handle. Nothing gratuitous in this work at all but I told Jerry after reading the book that I wanted to adopt every old horse I could and tend them 'til they died.

The story is about Bud Frazer who at nineteen leaves his home in Echo Creek to work as a stunt rider in Hollywood in 1938. It's Bud's story. But it's also about family, home, enduring friendships, loss and the idea of the West and the cowboy archetype within it. We met Bud's family, Martha and Henry Frazer, in The Hearts of Horses and we meet them again with the addition of Bud and his little sister. Falling From Horses rivals that earlier title though barely, giving us that same depth of understanding of the human condition, for breaking new ground in fields of the Western myth and our own struggle as Americans (and globally) about what being a cowboy really means to the American character. Though never mentioned in this book, I kept thinking of the phrase "Cowboy up" and the message it sends to the human heart. This book is also about the dignity and respect of common labor, hard labor making a stark juxtaposition set against the fake glamour of a Hollywood picture.

I hope Molly's publisher enters this book for the National Book Award, the Pulitzer, the Spur, the WILLA and all the others because she'll sweep the dais. No, not sweep. Molly's gift as a story-teller will dazzle the many dais where this story, and her exquisite telling of it with detail and presence will resonate and remind us that there are stories worthy of a writer's blood and sweat and tears. Falling From Horses is one of the best of them.