Highland Crossings Book Review and Launch Party with Debut Author Gina Wellborn Book Launch Party!!!

Colonial American Christian Writers members Pamela Griffin, Jennifer Hudson Taylor, and Gina Welborn are teamed with Carol-award nominee Laurie Alice Eakes in this four novella collection published by Barbour in 2012.

Laurie Alice Eakes, Gina Welborn, and Nick at Colonial Williamsburg

Member Gina Welborn has her DEBUT in this North Carolina based colonial collection.

Highland Crossings

Laurie Alice Eakes, Pamela Griffin, Jennifer Hudson Taylor, and Gina Welborn

(Barbour, 2012)

Review by Carrie Fancett Pagels

Highland Crossing is a four-novella collection of Scottish immigrants, centered around an heirloom brooch.

1739 - Healer of My Heart, By Pamela Griffin

To keep from being killed, Seona sneaks aboard a ship sailing to America. A healer, on the crossing she saves Colin’s brother. When they reach the colony of North Carolina, Colin brings her under his wing, placing her in a home near his in an isolated settlement. I love this novella and felt like Pamela took me right to the backwoods of colonial North Carolina.  Wonderful love story by a fabulous story-teller!

1758 - Printed on My Heart, By Laurie Alice Eakes

The really fun part of reading this novella was that I took Laurie Alice around Colonial Williamsburg, with Gina, last year when she interviewed the printer there. Laurie Alice is blind but the reader would never know that reading her work. This novella is yet another example of this author’s ability to pack a shorter book (novella) with unbelievable details without sacrificing the integrity of the story.  Laurie Alice has you loving poor Fiona and her hero Owain before you can say “I do”!!! 

Gina Welborn and Laurie Alice Eakes visit Colonial Williamsburg for research

 1789 – Sugarplum Hearts, By Gina Welborn

Seren Cardew is a candy maker. Finley Sinclair, a new immigrant from Scotland, aspires to become a broker. Except that he has no clients! These two were made for each other! This is Gina Welborn’s debut.  Well done, Gina!

1815 - Heart’s Inheritance, By Jennifer Hudson Taylor

 Brynna Sinclair aspires to bring a museum to her town and cherishes history. She likes things to stay as they are. When Niall Cameron, a new Scottish immigrant, takes over at her workplace, she is sure his changes will bring ruin to the community. When he buys a building that Brynna has coveted for a museum, sparks fly.

Jennifer Hudson Taylor has two other Scottish trade length books under her belt and it shows in her knowledge. She also lives in North Carolina, where the story is set!

Highland Crossings can be purchased from CBD, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble

GIVEAWAYS:  Copies of the book will be given away to three commenters this week.  Leave your email address.

Review of Heart's Inheritance by Jennifer Hudson Taylor

Heart’s Inheritance

By Jennifer Hudson Taylor

Reviewed by Teresa Mathews

Jennifer’s story “Heart’s Inheritance” tells the story of Brynna Sinclair, younger daughter of Finley and Seren Cardew Sinclair. Brynna is a young lady who loves history and antiques, and abhors change.  Brynna, accompanied by her brother Rob and friend Jean are on a trip to Charleston to learn as much as possible about museums. Brynna’s dream is to see a museum built in Fayetteville.

On the return trip home Rob is approached by a stranger from Scotland that would like to accompany them back to Charleston. From the moment they meet Brynna is determined not to like him. She is very cynical of the man whom she imagines looks the part of a handsome rogue. But this handsome rogue is Brynna’s new boss, the nephew of her very much loved now deceased boss, Edward Cameron. The more he talks about changing things in his newly inherited business, the angrier Brynna becomes. She is determined to fight him all the way, even if it means she must spread misconstrued stories about him to everyone in town. What will it take for Brynna to realize that he is not the monster she thinks he is?

Niall Cameron, the heir of Edward Cameron, beloved member of Fayetteville’s community, is anxious to begin his new life in America. When he meets Rob Sinclair, his sister Brynna and her friend Jean, he hopes they won’t mind if he rides along with them. Brynna is a beautiful, spirited young woman who for some reason cannot stand Niall. Rob tells Niall he needs to stop the talk of change and try to gain a love of history if he ever wants Brynna to change her mind about him.

On his first day in Fayetteville, Niall is shown around town by an unhappy Brynna, and it seems he can’t do anything without making her angry. He doesn’t understand her opposition to change, he knows change comes even when we don’t want it; his uncle’s death is proof of that. Niall is hoping he can change Brynna’s bitterness toward him but when he unknowingly undermines her plans for the museum by buying the building she wants; it seems there is no hope for that. Will Niall be able to mend the rift between Brynna and himself? When Niall comes to Brynna’s rescue when someone steals the treasures (including the broach) people have donated for her museum, will he survive, or will Brynna lose the greatest treasure of all, Niall? 

I was first introduced to Jennifer Hudson Taylor’s books when I read “Highland Blessings”; it was so well written that I couldn’t wait to read “Highland Sanctuary”. After reading this novella, I have come to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter the length of the story, Jennifer knows how to pull you in and keep you there unto the very last printed word!

Teresa is a reviewer on Overcoming Through Time - With God's Help.  When she is not busy with her boys she is looking out for her  Mama in South Carolina.  Teresa loves to read Christian historical fiction and share her reviews with others.


Highland Crossings (Barbour, 2012) follows the story of four young ladies linked through time by a beautiful broach handed down through several generations. This is the second review of four reviews on Colonial Quills. Click here for MaryLu Tyndall's review of Laurie Alice Eakes's novella.


Highland Crossings is available through CBD as well as Amazon and other book stores.  It is available in both paperback and ebook/Kindle editions.

GIVEAWAY:  Leave a comment and your email to be entered in this week’s contest.  Drawing will be late Saturday.  

Review of Highland Crossings Novella "Printed on My Heart" by Laurie Alice Eakes

Printed on My Heart
by Laurie Alice Eakes
(Barbour, 2012)

Reviewed by MaryLu Tyndall

Historic North Carolina takes center stage in a new collection of novellas that follows the lives and loves of four women…and the heirloom brooch that connects them through generations. Will Seona, Fiona, Seren, and Brynna find God’s path in a new world far from their Scottish home?

Printed on My Heart is the second story in the Highland Crossings Novella collection and it was an absolute delight to read!  Laurie Alice is one of my favorite authors. She has a way of grabbing you from the very beginning and never letting you go until she gives you a very satisfying ending. This book is no exception. The beginning opens up with the heroine, Fiona, tied to a whipping post about to be whipped by the town's constable for being a vagrant. Oh my!!  I'm hooked. Then along comes a tall, handsome man to the rescue, the son of the town's printer, who has secrets of his own, but a heart as big as the state. He pays for Fiona's release then brings her home to his loving family where she works as a bondswoma to pay off her debt. 

But Fiona has other plans. She is searching for a family heirloom, a precous brooch that her sister brought to the states from Scotland years earlier. Those plans are thwarted when she falls in love with Owain, the man who saved her and who now wins her heart. But Owain is involved in something that brings trouble to the family, and when the town constable threatens to ruin both their lives, will he and Fiona learn to put their trust in God and not in money or a family heirloom to provide what they need?

It's amazing how much romance and fun this author can put into one small novella. You won't want to miss Printed on my Heart!!  

Award-winning author Laurie Alice Eakes has always loved books. When she ran out of available stories to entertain and encourage her, she began creating her own tales of love and adventure. In 2006 she celebrated the publication of her first hardcover novel. Much to her astonishment and delight, it won the National Readers Choice Award. Besides writing, she teaches classes to other writers, mainly on research, something she enjoys nearly as much as creating characters and their exploits. A graduate of Asbury College and Seton Hill University, she lives in Texas with her husband and sundry animals.

Visit Laurie's website at :  http://lauriealiceeakes.com/


Highland Crossings is available for purchase through Amazon and  at Christianbook.com

Highland Crossings (Romancing America): North Carolina, has four novellas.  We will be reviewing each of the novellas here on CQ.  Tomorrow come by for a review of Jennifer Hudson Taylor's novella.

GIVEAWAY:  We will be giving away a copy of this book later in the week.

Making Chocolate Eighteenth Century Style

Submitted by Laurie Alice Eakes

To Make Confectionary Drops

Take double refined sugar, pound and sift it through a hair sieve, not too
fine; then sift it through a silk sieve to take out all the fine dust which
would destroy the beauty of the drop. Put the sugar into a clean pan, and
moisten it with any favourite aromatic...Colour it with a small quantity of
liquid carmine, or any other colour, ground fine. Take a small pan with a
lip, fill it three parts with paste, place it on a small stove, the half hole
being the size of the pan, and stir the sugar with a little ivory or bone
handle, until it becomes liquid. When it almost boils, take it from the fire
and continue to stir it: if it be too moist, take a little of the powdered
sugar, and add a spoonful to the paste, and stir it till it is of such a
consistence as to run without too much extension. Have a tin plate, very
clean and smooth; take the little pan in the left hand, and hold in the right
a bit of iron, copper, or silver wire, four inches long, to take off the drop
from the lip of the pan, and let it fall regularly on the tin plate; two
hours afterwards, take off the drops with the blade of a knife.


To Make Chocolate Drops
Scrape the chocolate to powder, and put an ounce to each pound of sugar;
moisten the paste with clear water, work it as above, only take care to use
all the paste prepared, as if it be put on the fire a second time, it
greases, and the drop is not of the proper thickness.

Note: A pound of sugar is about 2 cups by modern measurements. I have no idea how much an ounce of cocoa powder is, but this would be like Hersheys cocoa powder for baking.

Libraries Are Not Obsolete

By Laurie Alice Eakes

With so much data and so many books on-line, public libraries seem to have become places for community gatherings and children’s story hour rather than sites for research. For many authors, even getting to the library may prove a challenge due to distance, small children to tow around, or simply the effort of getting into a car and driving there (we will ignore the inconvenience of having to put on respectable clothing and at least a dab of lipstick). Budget cuts in most municipalities these days have also curtailed library hours and resources; however, to dismiss a library as a research tool is a mistake. In the next few paragraphs, I will talk about some reasons why such as finding rare books, getting access to amazing old records, and on-line databases.

Interlibrary Loan

When I was a student at Virginia Tech, I had to take classes in research methods. At least a third of the class ended up devoted to how to use the library. The digital age had arrived, and blended with the age of paper and ink. In its simplest form, Interlibrary Loan had become easier. One could go to www.worldcat.org and find out who had that special book you really longed to read, could no longer buy, or cost $250.00 used on EBay. Your local library can obtain these kinds of books for you. Often, small fees are involved for mailing, and some of these books cannot be removed from the library. When researching my midwife paper that turned into a series of novels, I found books from as far away as Nottingham, England and as old as the 1670s. No, that book did not leave the library. I could, however, copy it. Yes, many of these books are in Google Books now, and, interestingly, two of my best midwifery resources are still not digitized. Too rare perhaps?

I’ll add a note here that authors can look on Worldcat to see if their books are in libraries, but don’t get depressed if only a few show up as having been purchased. I know of many libraries that have my books that do not show up in the on-line catalogue. Still, it’s fun to look.

So, before you drop a lot of money to find that resource that you may only use for ten pages, but has the only resource for what you exactly need, use your library for Interlibrary Loan. But do make sure it’s in the right language. I ended up with one book that was entirely in Latin. Fortunately, my graduate assistant was fluent in Latin and found and translated the data I needed. That was wonderfully serendipitous, and isn’t likely to happen often.

Reference Librarians

They love to be asked questions. At least this has been my experience. No matter where I have lived, no matter in what library I have walked in search of some obscure detail, the reference librarian has treated me like I’m her new best friend. Usually they are alone behind a desk in an obscure corner fielding questions about where the drinking fountain can be found. What they really want is to have someone say, “Can you tell me what the marriage license regulations were in New Jersey in 1825?” They’re not likely to know, and they will know where to find it.

Reference sections are full of books that can’t be removed from the library such as atlases of what a place looked like 200 years ago, books of laws no longer laws, but were at the time you need, and archives you may have to wait for librarians to retrieve and sign away your firstborn to so much as glance at. Especially if you are doing local research, your library is an invaluable resource. Even the tiniest towns with libraries have a local history section.

Microfilm and fiche are pretty much gone by the wayside; however, the materials are not. Much has been transferred into digital form such as CD and DVD. Explore. I found a diary of an eighteenth century noblewoman and was able to photocopy the entire thing. Old newspapers are also digitized and stored in libraries. My midwife research taught me a great deal about the respect these women held in society simply through reading obituaries. The nice thing about the digitized versions is that they are searchable.

And let us not forget the availability of things beyond the budgets of most of us like the Oxford English Dictionary. Most libraries have access to it in print and/or digital form, or even on-line.

On-line Databases

Ladies and gentlemen, this is an author’s dream and treasure-trove. More and more libraries, even little ones, are obtaining access to on-line databases. This includes the OED, newspapers from present, to back a couple hundred years, and, yes, old photographs. When researching Better than Gold, I discovered a wealth of data on the history of telegraphy through the on-line databases, including pictures of old telegraph machines.

The Library of Congress web site also has a wealth of information including old newspapers, maps, photographs and paintings, and articles on historical subjects. If you have a few hours to waste that will not end up a waste, explore www.loc.gov.

Your library will require a library card for using Interlibrary Loan, and sometimes this costs a small fee, too, and on-line databases generally require a password. These are easily obtained often without ever leaving your home.

So in this age of the Internet’s resources and treasure troves like Google Books, do not forget that your library has often otherwise unobtainable information you will find useful in your historic research. One of these I learned was the knowledge of history of a librarian, who led me down a path of how to research using people, even if most of your subjects are no longer alive. But that’s for another article.

Tools of the Trade: Google Books

Google Books

Beyond the Search Engine

By Laurie Alice Eakes

While studying for my master’s degree in history, I enjoyed the privilege of an enormous library that could, consequentially, obtain books from near and far, new and very old. Once I left there, research became such a let-down. Phrase dictionaries didn’t quite have what I wanted to find out. The information about a social attitude of the day eluded me no matter how many contemporary sources I read. And how did critics of the time truly feel about Daniel Defoe’s most famous work Robinson Crusoe?

Amidst controversy and delight burst Google Books. Whether or not they should be scanning and selling versions of books under copyright is not the point of this discussion. Here I am talking about getting the most out of searching books and the wonderful other sources no longer under copyright or, as the proper term is, in the public domain. Right now, this is still anything published before 1923. That date will move, but that’s getting into extensive and complex copyright law with which I will not bore anyone, including myself. Be assured that most of your favorite hymns and carols and songs the historical author of anything prior to 1923 wants to access for one’s story may be freely used just like the King James version of the Bible.

To keep this basic for a blog post and not a treatise, I’ll give you some basic dos and don’ts to follow for best results.

1:         Don’t treat Google Books like a search engine. This is fine if you know exactly which book you wish to find, and it’s pretty useless otherwise.

2:         Get to where you will receive the best results this way:

A: books.google.com  No www or anything else. Just what I have.

            B: Click on Browse

            C: Click on Advanced search.

3:         This gives you so many searches, I’m going to walk you through an actual search. And how I filled it out.

1: with the first option: all of these words, as you would with a Google search, use as many terms as you think you need. I kept mine simple to start with. My hero of the next colonial novella I’ll be writing (out 2012 in Colonial Courtships) is a baker. He runs the town bakehouse. So I want to know about Connecticut bakehouses.

            2: I don’t have an exact phrases necessary here; however, this is particularly useful when searching specific names such as North Carolina.

            C: In this first round, I don’t have unwanted words, but I will to narrow down the results.

            4: I use full view only because these are the ones in public domain.

            5: likewise, I use all materials because journals, periodicals, etc. are wonderful resources.

            6: here is the fun part: limit the years. I want nothing past say 1770 for close to as accuracy as I can get in the story, so I can limit my years from say 1700 to 1770 and keep limiting, again, to narrow results.

What I get are several useful resources I can click on and read or save in my Google library for future perusal and reference. I can download them onto my computer. For those of you with e-readers that will take PDF files, it’s research gold.

I got too many results and received results with plantation information. So I could do a second round with the word plantation eliminated.

In researching one project, I found a list of businesses in a particular town in the 1850s and the owners of those businesses. Talk about a treasure!

One can also search Google Books to learn if a phrase was used at a particular time if other search resources fail you. Take the expression “catch up” as to get the latest details on someone’s life. If you want to know if your colonial heroine and her favorite cousin she hasn’t seen in three years would “catch up” on their lives, you can search for it to read in context in your time period. It wasn’t used that way then, by the way. I looked it up once. It was used as in to pick up a dropped thread or getting entangled in something. So you can see how the term became used to find out what your friend’s latest status report has evolved.

For historical researchers, I think this advanced search feature of Google Books is one of the most grossly under-used resources on the Web. People don’t find it on Google, and stop there. Go a couple more steps, and you will find everything from when doctors started to perform caesarians for difficult births (something I read a lot about for When the Snow Flies), to save the mother and baby, too, to details about specific times, to when a term was first used in proper context.

Enjoy and play around and do, please share your successes. If you have frustrations, leave a post and I’ll see if I can talk you out of saying it’s worthless by showing you other tricks.

Oh, yes, you may wish to click the results in English, too, unless you want another language!