Moving Along Into 2025

This week I’ll give two more readings from Taken by the Shawnee, at a book group here in Santa Fe and then at what used to be called an Old Folks Home. These will be my seventeenth and eighteenth presentations of my novel, beginning when it was published by Turtle Point Press in New York last June.

I’m astonished and gratified by the attention Shawnee has received as an adventure story set in 1799, focusing on my many times great grandmother, Margaret Erskine, and her four years as an adopted daughter of the Shawnee in the Ohio Country. Perhaps this great success is what all writers finally achieve—this is my sixteenth published book—but I doubt if it’s that alone. As we all face an uncertain political future, the courage and determination of Margaret who was determined to survive all hardships—including the murder of her infant—resonates.

And, as always in this country, a brush of what can’t really be called scandal, but the hint of a possible scandal, helps. In my case, it came in May when a group of unnamed employees at an extremely expensive hotel here vetoed a reading of my novel. I never knew why; they had only seen the title since the book wasn’t out yet. But I suspect the title was enough. We are passing through a time (passing through, remember!) when strictures are tightening on what writers are “allowed” to write and publish about; this is the other noxious branch of the book banning happening all over the country. I know that my readers will not find anything scandalous in Margaret’s story; as I explain, it’s the story of an ignorant white woman written by an ignorant white woman. Margaret learned to respect the Shawnee by living among them;  I learned to respect the Shawnee through research and writing about them.

And so it goes. Now I’m preparing my next book, a collection of short stories called Cowboy Tales, to be published next fall by Turtle Point Press. It too will arouse some kind of opposition since the stories turn beloved myths of the West upside down and inside out.

My devoted readers will understand.

In Writing Taken by the Shawnee How Daddy Lost His Ear and Other Stories