BONNETS OR BURN by Marisa Masterson

 

Glory trudged behind the wagon. Three days out and the walking hadn’t grown easier. Not like some silly man spouted last night at the company meeting. He’d said day three would be less painful on everyone. Something about muscles being used to the exercise.

Well, hers screamed to turn around and walk east. She wanted the home they’d left, rough though it was, and she longed for her mother. Both, of course, were gone.

Perhaps grief made each step harder than the previous. Lifting her feet one after another felt as if she hauled large, heavy stones. She knew deep inside that she needed to fall into the grass with its dry rattle to one side of the trail and rest. Its waving motion in the slight breeze mesmerized her.

She took one step and then another into it. “Where you goin’, Glory?” The voice surprised her. She pushed back the long-brimmed bonnet to see who spoke.

Alfie Severson ran up to her, his young face eager for excitement. “Are you gonna look for sticks? I’m good at findin’ them.”

Bonnets! That was what my wagon-train romance needed! I’d written a whole novel without adding the one thing that no woman would have been without in the 1850s.

My heroine finds herself on the Santa Fe Trail in the late summer. Historically, I knew that 1858 was a year of terrible drought and hot days. Every decent woman wore a bonnet at this time.

But why? Of course, it made sense that a woman out in the sun would cover her head to avoid heat stroke. Wearing the bonnet went beyond that, though, as I found in my research.

Women covered their hair outside or in public. Modesty and Christian teaching demanded this. Glory, my heroine, would never have left her wagon without something on her head.

Still, on the trail some of society’s rules were forgotten or bent. This one, I don’t think, would have been one of them. The bonnet, while hot, kept a woman’s hair cleaner and helped her avoid a sunburned face.

Some prairie bonnets had even longer brims.

The prairie bonnet, as it is called, had a longer brim. Some of the women who traveled the trails would probably have had a shorter brimmed sun bonnet. Those are what my great-grandmother wore.

My grandmother's bonnet had cardboard compartments

that made the brim stiff so it didn't flop onto her face

 as she worked in the garden. This is an example of that.

My family never threw away things. My great-grandmother’s every day bonnets were kept in a closet at my grandfather’s farmhouse. I remember playing with them, not realizing how old they were. Beautiful, simple cotton with cardboard compartments to make the brim less floppy, I can still see them. Each bonnet actually matched a shirtwaist and skirt that was born for every day wear!

With those old family bonnets in mind, I’ve got some rewriting to do. Yes sir, the ladies in my novel are wearing bonnets!

AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER! 

Dead set on making Pike’s Peak and its goldfields, Glory’s father leaves her little choice but to go. Will they make it leaving so late in the season?

The Smoky Hill River

 By Kathryn Albright

Oak Grove is a fictional town in western Kansas along the Smoky Hill River. Laurie Robinson and I are writing a new book series set there and the first one has just been released.

Laurie has the fortunate circumstance of having lived for several years in the area she is writing about. Having never been to Kansas, I had some research to do. I found these beautiful pictures that started all sorts of ideas going in my head.

The river plays an integral part in the three stories that I am setting in the Smoky Hill region of northwestern Kansas. It originates in eastern Colorado and its waters flow east all the way to the Mississippi River. The area was a rich hunting grounds for the Plains Indians before they were forced onto reservations. A big grove of cottonwoods along the river on the Kansas/Colorado border was the impetus for the river’s name. From across the plains, the grove looked like a billow of smoke.

Along the river are several towns, the largest being Salina. There are also several forts that the Army established along the river to protect travelers. Oak Grove is situated nearest to and east of Fort Wallace, but it is still an hour or so to ride there on horseback.

At the time of the Pike’s Peak Gold Rush in Colorado (1858), an Indian trail along the river known as the Smoky Hill Trail, was the fastest route across Kansas. Then in 1865, the Butterfield Overland Despatch, a stage coach route ran for a short time. Then in 1870, the Kansas-Pacific Railway took over as the best way to travel across Kansas.

The river at my fictional town of Oak Grove is three feet deep and two hundred feet wide, except during the spring rainy season when flooding over the low banks occurs and extends out over the plains. The weather I learned, is sunny most of the time and arid. And much of what I read about was about the unrelenting, and constant wind.

There is more research I did—types of crops, types of fish, buffalo wallows and cattle drives… Research always gives me lots of ideas for plotting for my stories and all these facts that I have presented about the Smoky Hill River come up in my books. As much as Oak Grove and the characters are fictional, everything else in my books are factual – at least as much as I can make it so through research.

You can find more pictures of inspiration for all my stories at http://www.pinterest.com/kathrynalbright

I hope that you will join Laurie and me as we tell you all about Oak Grove and its wonderful inhabitants!  Our first book, kicking off the new series is Mail-Order Brides of Oak Grove. Laurie wrote Mary's story and I wrote Maggie's and intertwined them throughout the book which was challenging and fun.

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