Clothing! It is so essential for me as an author.
No, not what I wear when I write. I mean the garments specific to a historical period.
Take the bustle, for example. By 1870, fashionable women sported the bump on their backsides. (Unsightly to me, not to them.) Ladies even added a train to it. If I were to guess, they wanted to be sure everyone noticed their bouffant bustles.
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| https://lilyabsinthe.com/adams-atelier- where-history-meets-fashion/fashion-history/ the-bustle-dress-a-brief-overview-part-1/ |
My next book, Hotfooting from Hawthorne, takes place in 1878. By that time, the uncomfortable bustle had grown smaller and smaller (like a shrinking wart!). For a poor woman like Ginny Maxwell, my heroine, the bustle would not be a problem. She wears a simple woolen skirt with no bulge to make her appear fashionable.
From the book:
She ran her hands over her dark red skirt. They were damp. She realized it must be from worrying over her future.
The skirt needed a good washing. For that matter, she and Eddie each needed one as well. Neither had slept in a bed or had a bath for the last fifteen days. It had been a grueling trip.
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| https://www.pinterest.com/pin/1870s- hats-and-bonnets- victorian-fashions-- 457678380861773328/ |
Fashion in the 1870s also focused on the bonnet. Women wore these rather than hats, and they had become smaller. Many ladies set the bonnet on the back of the head rather than shading their face with it. I took care to give my heroine a bonnet, something she loses early on in the story. The hero notices her lack of one.
From the book:
Instead of hiding them in the wagon, Deke helped Ginny and Eddie onto the wagon’s seat. He looked at her head and frowned. “Don’t you have a bonnet, Miss Ginny?”
She shook her head. “Please call me Ginny, and no, I don’t. It’s back at the depot in Hawthorne, Mr. Ramsay.”
“Deke,” he corrected as he turned to the sheriff. “McCullough, ask your deputy to collect Ginny’s luggage. Did you have a trunk?” he asked as he glanced back at her.
“No, only a carpetbag I left under the bench on the platform. Eddie has a pillowcase there, filled with his things.”
McCullough gave a lopsided grin. “The least I can do for a lady. I’ll see to getting your things, Miss Ginny.”
With a wave, the sheriff turned and entered his office. Deke pointed across the street. “Expect we’d best step into Handley’s store and get you a bonnet.”
The hero takes care to get her one in a scene met to warm any reader's heart:
After returning the items to Marv Simmons, Deke paid him for the spectacles. He added a straw bonnet to his purchase. Silk roses trimmed the brim. Ginny had never owned anything so beautiful.
“For you, my bride.” Deke grinned as he untied the second-hand black bonnet and placed the new one on her head.
Ginny blushed at the attention. Warmth rushed through her. If she were to guess, she would say it was the feeling of being loved and cared for by Deke.
She tied the bonnet’s pink ribbons under her chin. Her husband untied them. “No, the ladies tie the bow at one side, not in the middle.” He redid it.
She glanced in the store’s mirror. A pink-cheeked, happy woman stared back at her. “It’s too good for me, Deke. Thank you!”
“No, I wish I could get you one that’s solid gold. Nothing’s too good for you, Ginny. You are a once in a lifetime woman.”
Check out my new book, releasing Sept. 9th. Hotfooting from Hawthorne.
Who can love orphans? Ginny struggles with this question even as she witnesses a murder that sends her on the run unwittingly toward the answer to her question.
Ginny Maxwell has one child left as she waits at a train depot in Hawthorne, Nevada. The others left one by one as the orphan train traveled farther west. She wanted to believe each had found homes where they would be clothed and fed. She could not hope for them to be loved. Growing up as a foundling, she knew adults rarely wasted affection on orphans.
While she and the unclaimed orphan wait for the eastern bound train that would take them back to Chicago, their lives change with one slash of a shiny knife. A man stabs a lone woman waiting on the platform. At Ginny's gasp, he realizes she and the little boy have seen him.
A frantic race to escape begins, and desperation sends them into the back of a tarp-covered wagon. Hiding there, she hears the whistle. They missed their train and are stuck with a killer on their trail.
Deke Ramsey struggles with the day-to-day needs of his new ranch. He has put his days as a bounty hunter behind him. The man does not want the trouble he discovers when he throws back the tarp and finds stowaways in his wagon. He is hard put to ignore the child's pleading gaze or the woman's tempting promise to keep house for him.
What starts as an innocent arrangement will put him in the path of a killer and a group of do-gooders from the surrounding ranches. Will a forced marriage end in a happy family or with a dead wife and child?
