A Tale Of Two Heroes

By Kathleen Eagle

This is one of my favorite covers. Sunrise Song is a serious story, and this is a serious guy. It’s also a Romance. The heroes–two for the price of one–are irresistible. The title fits the story, which is romantically uplifting. And the setting is wild and wondrous. It’s all here, on the face of a work of fiction, the proverbial lie that tells the truth.

Years ago my husband, Clyde, participated in a conference that featured a presentation on Hiawatha Asylum For Insane Indians in Canton, SD. It was operated by the government from 1903 to 1935, when a new administration investigated it and shut it down. Clyde–who is Lakota grew up on the South Dakota side of Standing Rock Sioux Reservation–had never heard of any asylum for “insane Indians.” We were intrigued and decided to drive down to take a look. The buildings were long ago replaced by a community hospital adjacent to a 9-hole golf course, which surrounds the burial place for at least 121 asylum “patients,” whose names are engraved on a single memorial. A golf tournament was going on around us as we read the names, and a ball dropped over the fence. I could almost hear the ghosts laughing.

I think those spirits helped me come up with an idea for a story. It would invite readers to walk in Indian Country with two sets of flesh-and-blood characters in a story that tugs at the heartstrings, at once gritty and hopeful, as women’s fiction is wont to be.

Researching the place proved challenging. Nothing had been written about it. Back home the elders who remembered hearing of the asylum said people spoke of it in whispers back in the day for fear of “being taken away.” You didn’t have to be insane, they said. Just uncooperative. Maybe you were as traditional as your grandparents, and you“spoke Indian”or you ran away from boarding school. I needed to know all that and much more. Both sides. With the help of a librarian at the SD State Library I got copies of old reports from their historical files.

In the years since we did our research, the site has been added to the National Registry of Historic Places. Sunrise Song was favorably reviewed in the Canton SD newspaper. And I received a letter from a woman who grew up in Canton. Her family lived close to the asylum, parents worked there. They admired Dr. Hummer, the supervisor of the asylum, who was fired after the D.C. administrators got around investigating the program. The letter writer said she’d read my book, and she was deeply moved. She remembered visiting with patients–inmates, really–through the fence. And now she wondered whether anything her parents told her was true. She couldn’t ask them. Her father, a local farmer hired to manage the asylum’s farm, and her mother, a cook, had long since passed away.  Now it was my turn to be deeply moved by someone who was there, and who was able to look back at her own story and turn the coin over, really look at the other side. She thanked me for writing Sunrise Song.

Fiction is written to entertain, but it can do much more. It can allow us to walk the road less traveled wearing the shoes of someone living in a place among people we know little about. Books, books, books–surely you are the salt of the earth.

Happy reading!

Kathleen Eagle

Sunrise Song by Kathleen Eagle is only $0.99 until the 31st! Find it on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google, and Apple!

Wanna Play a Terrifying Game of Hide and Seek? 1…2…3… By Allie Harrison

“With one touch of a cold, dead hand, Tess Fairmont had the ability to see the last several moments of a victim’s horrifying murder. She felt what the victim felt, even smelled every whiff of fear.

If you had the ability to help others, no matter how terrifying it was for you, would you?

In Hide and Seek, by Allie Harrison, Tess chooses to help the FBI search out serial killers.

And the latest murderer is the most horrifying she’s ever encountered. Why? Because he has the ability to follow her through her visions, right to her own front door.

Of course it helps to have Dr. Michael Adams’ shoulder to lean on, and she finds safety in his embrace.

If you’re looking for a suspense with paranormal elements, mind games all baked into a lovely cupcake with a sweet frosting of romance on top, Hide and Seek is the book for you.

I can’t remember a time I didn’t love suspense. From true horror to who done it, I love anything that keeps me on the edge of my seat or keeps me wondering. Feel free to like me on Facebook and follow along. https://www.facebook.com/Allie-Harrison-Author-106928505995715/?ref=bookmarks

I’ll hold your hand if you need me to!”

Hide and Seek by Allie Harrison is only $0.99 until the 30th! Get your eBook copy today!

Available on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google, and Apple.

The Lure of a Dangerous Man By Cindi Myers

“American history is full of people who, though on the wrong side of the law, captured the public’s attention and became revered in spite of their crimes – men like Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, Butch Cassidy, and Jesse James. These larger-than-life legends can be both compelling and repelling as we dig into their stories, but for me, the most fascinating things about these outlaws are the families who supported them and the women who loved them. What was it about these men – and what was it in these women – that led them to link their fates to men who almost inevitably came to bad ends?
In a dozen years after the Civil War, Jesse James and his cohorts committed as many as 19 robberies, during which almost twenty people died – some of them members of Jesse’s own gang. He was a super-celebrity, someone profiled in every newspaper and known throughout the country, written about in books and popularized in plays – in the days before the internet, television, or even telephones. And all the while he was carrying out his crimes and growing his legend, he was also a husband and father.

When I began writing The Woman Who Loved Jesse James, I had to dig deeply to find information on his wife Zerelda, called Zee. Zee was Jesse’s first cousin, named after his mother. Delving into census records, family histories and the few lines she merited in the many biographies of Jesse, I discovered a quiet, serious woman enough in love with her handsome, dashing cousin to endure a nine-year engagement. Once married, however, life was not all comfort and ease, as Jesse’s notoriety increased. Zee supposedly begged him to settle down. I imagined Zee, like many woman drawn to ‘bad’ men, torn by her desire for adventure and excitement, and the need to protect her children from danger and uncertainty.

Pictures of Jesse show a blond, blue-eyed man who would have turned any woman’s head. An excellent rider, educated, with good manners and a reputation as a sharp dresser, it’s not hard to see why Zee might have fallen for him. The few images available of Zee James show a tiny (under five feet), woman with dark frizzed hair. She was from a poor family, one of twelve children, and had known Jesse all her life.

Though my book is fiction, it is based on fact. Zee and Jesse did live under assumed names during a time in which Jesse was supposedly trying to go straight. She kept Jesse’s secrets throughout her life and, unlike her mother-in-law, retreated from the public eye after his death, and didn’t try to make money off her tragedy. Looking at photos of her taken after Jesse’s death, it’s easy to see the pain in her eyes. I wanted to know what she thought about the life she had led – The Woman Who Loved Jesse James is my attempt to tell her story.

Have you known a woman who loved a man in spite of his dangerous behavior? What do you think is the attraction for them?”

The Woman Who Loved Jesse James by Cindi Myers is only $0.99 until the 30th! Get your eBook copy today!

Available on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Google, and Apple.