I grew up in western Missouri just ten miles from the Kansas line. This was the area where the Civil War actually began in 1857 over the struggle for Kansas statehood--whether it would allow slavery or not. Because of the happenings there before and during the Civil War, this was the region that spawned Jesse James, the Younger Brothers, and Belle Star for years after the official war was over.

But the strange thing is that none of the old-timers talked about it. Their silence was partly because many of the inhabitants before the war never returned. It was partly because, as historians of the late 1800s said when they interviewed people about it, the answer was, "It was so bad I don't want to talk about it." The Kansas Jayhawkers and Red Legs against the Missouri Bushwhackers. Both sides did unspeakable things as each side raided across the border.

There was even a little battle site less than two miles from our farm that I knew nothing about until my historian brother did some research. Intrigued, I also researched and learned of Military Order No. 11, where in 1863 Federal General Thomas Ewing of Kansas City ordered everyone in the four Missouri counties on the Kansas border just south of Kansas City to leave their homes and farms within fifteen days or be captured and sent to detention camps. The whole four counties were then sacked and burned, hence the historic name given to the area--the Burnt District. This order, which was intended to stop the outlawry of the Confederate sympathizers into Kansas, merely opened up the region to more outlawry. There were no loyal citizens left to tell the authorities.

What a perfect setting for an historical novelist. Prime material for a story. I wondered, when ordered to leave her home with her three small daughters, what would a young woman do whose husband was away and unreachable in the Federal Army?

Using real incidents that I did find in the local histories, and knowing the terrain of the area, I invented my protagonist and other main characters, but used actual historical persons and events with real locations to show how my protagonist overcame her enemies without any violence.

I believe this is the best of my novels that have been published.