Fiction Sampler: The Colonel's Lady by Laura Frantz

The Colonel's Lady
Laura Frantz
Revell, August 2011


Author Laura Frantz brings us her new novel, The Colonel's Lady. Laura credits her grandmother as being the catalyst for her fascination with Kentucky history. Frantz's ancestors followed Daniel Boone into Kentucky in the late eighteenth century and settled in Madison County, where her family still resides. She has also authored the highly acclaimed The Frontiersman's Daughter and Courting Morrow Little.

"Laura Frantz portrays the wild beauty of frontier life, along with its dangers and hardships, in vivid detail."--Ann H. Gabhart

In 1779, when genteel Virginia spinster Roxanna Rowan arrives at the Kentucky fort commanded by Colonel Cassius McLinn, she finds that her officer father has died. Penniless and destitute, Roxanna is forced to take her father's place as scrivener. Before long, it's clear that the colonel himself is attracted to her. But she soon realizes the colonel has grave secrets of his own--some of which have to do with her father's sudden death. Can she ever truly love him?




Kentucke Territory, November 1779

This is madness.

Roxanna Rowan leaned against the slick cave entrance and felt an icy trickle drop down the back of her neck as she bent her head. Her right hand, shaky as an aspen leaf, caressed the cold steel of the pistol in her pocket. Being a soldier’s daughter, she knew how to use it. Trouble was she didn’t want to. The only thing she’d ever killed was a copperhead in her flower garden back in Virginia, twined traitorously among scarlet poppies and deep blue phlox.

An Indian was an altogether different matter.

The cave ceiling continued to weep, echoing damply and endlessly and accenting her predicament. Her eyes raked the rosy icicles hanging from the sides and ceiling of the cavern. Stalactites. Formed by the drip of calcareous water, or so Papa had told her in a letter. She’d never thought to see such wonders, but here she was, on the run from redskins and Redcoats in the howling wilderness. And in her keep were four fallen women and a mute child.

They were huddled together further down the cavern tunnel, the women’s hardened faces stiff with rouge and fright. Nancy. Olympia. Dovie. Mariah. And little Abby. All five were looking at her like they wanted her to do something dangerous. Extending

one booted foot, she nudged the keelboat captain. In the twilight she saw that the arrow protruding from his back was fletched with turkey feathers. He’d lived long enough to lead them to the mouth of the cave—a very gracious gesture—before dropping dead. Thank You, Lord, for that. But what on earth would You have me do now? A stray tear leaked from the corner of her left eye as she pondered their predicament.

The Indians had come out of nowhere that afternoon—in lightning-quick canoes—and the women had been forced to abandon the flatboat and flee in a pirogue to the safer southern shore, all within a few miles of their long-awaited destination. Fort Endeavor was just downriver, and if they eluded the Indians, they might reach it on foot come morning. Surely a Shawnee war party would rather be raiding a vessel loaded with rum and gunpowder than chasing after five worthless women and a speechless child.

“Miz Roxanna!” The voice cast a dangerous echo.

Roxanna turned, hesitant to take her eyes off the entrance lest the enemy suddenly appear. Her companions had crept further down the tunnel, huddled in a shivering knot. And then Olympia shook her fist, her whisper more a shout.

“I’d rather be took by Indians than spend the night in this blasted place!”

There was a murmur of assent, like the hiss of a snake, and Roxanna plucked her pistol from her pocket. “Ladies,” she said, stung by the irony of the address. “I’d much rather freeze in this cave than roast on some Indian spit. Now, are you with me or against me?”

The only answer was the incessant plink, plink, plink of water. Turning her back to them, she fixed her eye on the ferns just be- yond the cave entrance, studying the fading scarlet and cinnamon and saffron woods. With the wind whipping and rearranging the leaves, perhaps their trail would be covered if the Indians decided to pursue them. They’d also walked in a creek to hide their passing. But would it work? Roxanna heaved a shaky sigh.

I’m glad Mama’s in the grave and Papa doesn’t know a whit about my present predicament.

Yankee Noodle Dandy!

C.J. Chase’s Recipe for Homemade Noodles

I’m not certain this is colonial, but it’s been passed down in my family for generations, at least going back to the mid-1800’s. It’s easy and uses ingredients I have on hand, and it’s a good way to get rid of a leftover roast or Thanksgiving turkey.

Homemade Noodles:

2 eggs

2 c flour

2 T water

Salt*

Beat eggs and water. Add salt and as much flour as possible until batter is stiff. Roll out the dough to about 1/8” thick and put it on a cookie rack to dry. (Note: my grandmother let hers dry all day. I find that putting it in a 200 degree oven for 15 minutes or so works just as well.) Slice noodles into the desired width and add to boiling beef, chicken, turkey or ham broth. Makes a great homemade chicken noodle soup!

*I vary the amount of salt based on the type of meat. I add little or no salt if the noodles will be going in a ham-based broth.

Tools of the Trade: 18th Century Reenactors--Through a Portal in Time

On September 24 and 25 I’m going to be at the Prairie Days at Shawnee Prairie Preserve near Greenville, Ohio. Held annually the last full weekend of September, this event focuses on the prairie way of life in and around 1780–1810 and will feature, crafts, games, and reenactors demonstrating the trades of the time period. This annual free family event attracts around 4,000 people to Shawnee Prairie Preserve each year. If you’re in the area, I hope you’ll come out and join us.

Although I’ve attended a number of reenactment events and visited many historical sites such as Williamsburg over the years, this will be my first foray into the reenactor’s world as more than just a spectator. I decided to go dressed in period-appropriate costume, so I’m in the process of assembling my ensemble—which is a lot of fun in and of itself! I was invited by a young woman who e-mailed a few years ago to tell me how much she enjoyed the American Patriot Series, and we’ve kept in touch. Her parents are reenactors, and her father works at Shawnee Prairie. So this spring she asked if I’d like to participate in the festival. It sounded like a great opportunity to get up close and personal with the reenactor’s world, especially as I was also asked to help judge the pie baking contest. Yum!

All this has reminded me that for students and writers of historical fiction and nonfiction, events like this are wonderful research resources, as are historical sites such as Williamsburg that feature docents in period costume interpreting the lives of actual people of the day. But they’re equally enjoyable and profitable for anyone who is interested in the lives of people from earlier times. Actually walking through restored or recreated sites, handling period objects and seeing demonstrations of how they were used, tasting period dishes, smelling the campfires and the earthy scents of native flora and fauna, and even experiencing the discomforts our ancestors had to deal with gives you a perspective that you can’t get otherwise. It’s truly like stepping through a portal in time.

I guarantee that you don’t live far from fascinating historical sites and parks, many you may never have heard of, that lift history out of the dusty pages of books and bring them to vivid life. Every year all across this country there are events set during a wide range of periods, including American colonial, trappers and traders, French and Indian War, American Revolution, early 1800s, Civil War, and even Medieval and Renaissance. Finding reenactment events/historical sites in your area or around the country is as easy as doing an online search.

One of the best sites for ReWar reenactors is Americanrevolution.org, which lists numerous links to American Revolutionary War reenactor organizations that provide schedules of their events. Reenactor.net has information and links for reenactor organizations from all eras. One interesting site I found is We Make History, an organization that offers both public and private historic balls, reenactments, living history, historical education, support of historic sites and more, according to their website. You’ll find a schedule of their public events on their site. It sounds as if they’re not only educational, but also a ton of fun.

The photos in this post are pictures I took at one such site in my area, Rock Castle, Tennessee, a couple of years ago during the Daniel Smith Frontier Days. If you’ve never attended a reenactment, I hope these will tempt you to step out of modern life and into history for a few hours or days!

An 18th Century Ladies Fashion Primer

This is my first post to Colonial Quills and I'm so happy to be here. I'll be sharing about fashion, textiles, and colonial Louisiana.

Unlike the 19^th and 20^th centuries, fashion in the 18^th century didn’t change very much for several decades. One can identify a dress from the 18^th century with only a couple of tools in her arsenal.

The first is silhouette. When most people think of dresses in the 1700’s, their mind immediately conjures up the riotous cartoons from Louis XVI’s France. Cartoons of wild, towering wigs decorated with birds or fruit or even boats. The cartoonists weren’t just lampooning Marie Antoinette’s wigs. They were going after the pannier too, which reached ridiculous proportions in the 1750’s and was brought back by Marie.

I found this picture from the University of Michigan. I have no idea if the photograph is in their collection or if the pannier and stays is in their collection. It’s a good example of a pannier and stay of the time. I don’t know the date, but I’m guessing it’s from sometime in the 1750’s to the 1770’s.

There are stories of Catherine the Great, Empress of All The Russias, once having worn a pannier that was eight feet across from one end to the other. The blue dress here is a British court dress from the 1750’s in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.

At the beginning of the century, the silhouette wasn’t all that different from the 15^th and 16^th centuries. Full skirts, three-quarter length sleeves with lace at the cuffs, ribbons, embroidery and sometimes garish prints. That silhouette flowed into the mantua, a cone shape silhouette so popular that for decades, tailors and seamstresses were often called mantua makers.

From the conical shape of the mantua, came the pannier. Introduced probably in the late 1740’s for court dress, it quickly became popular, reaching its zenith of size in the 1760’s with the above referenced dress worn by Catherine.

Only in France did the pannier continue to be popular. In the 1760’s a style of dress commonly called the saque dress came into style. While still having that definitive big hips silhouette, it was much smaller and featured what I think is one of the most flattering things in all of historical costume: a pleated back that fell from the neckline to the floor in one graceful piece of fabric. See what I mean? I love it. These two dresses are also at the Met in NYC.

From here we enter the 1770’s and the styles seen at Colonial Willamsburg and on the American Girl doll Felicity. The pannier is still present, but it’s continuing to shrink in width. By 1785, panniers had almost completely disappeared and the silhouette returned to a more normal shape. But if you look closely at the skirt, it’s not hard to imagine where the bustle of the 1870’s and 1880’s came from. There truly is nothing new in fashion. If you look back far enough, with the exception of the mini-skirt, it’s been done before.

In 1790, the pannier is dead, never to be resurrected. The silhouette is columnar in form, with a skirt that’s losing fullness by the year and a waistline that’s moving up. In 1800, the Regency/Empire style is in full force.

The second tool is fabric choice, though it’s not as reliable as silhouette. Western block printing was perfected in the mid 1700’s and this led to an explosion of elaborate, striped floral fabrics. For some reason they also loved bows and ruffles. Lots of them. At the same time. On fabric with very busy patterns. Particularly in France. It’s really quite easy to see why French fashion of that century was a favorite subject for cartoonists.

Next time we’ll take a look at men’s fashion. As boring as that is, it must be done.

Interview with debut author C.J. Chase

CJ Chase

Interview by Carrie Fancett Pagels

C.J. Chase is the author of Redeeming the Rogue

Published by: Love Inspired Historicals

Date: August, 2011

This is C.J.’s debut novel! Congrats, C.J., who lives here in Virginia and belongs to Colonial American Christian Writers and to our local Tidewater Christian Fiction Writers group.  Welcome to the Colonial Quills blog, C.J.!

C.J., what got you interested in this time period?

Well, this book is actually a little past the colonial period—and it’s set in England. But the plot revolves around the Treaty of Ghent, the treaty which ended the War of 1812. I love America and American history, and in fact, I have a novel set in Virginia’s early colonial period in my stash of as-yet unsold manuscripts.  Maybe someday …

I was a kid in the Midwest during the Bicentennial celebrations. (Yes, I know, I’m dating myself now.) It was all nice and fun, but it seemed rather abstract—until we traveled east on vacation that year. My father took me to an old, old cemetery on my uncle’s farm and showed me the gravesite of a Revolutionary War ancestor. Suddenly, the Bicentennial became personal.

What inspired your book?

The popularity of the Regency period among American readers has always seemed a little strange to me because we were at war with the British during that time. I decided to write what I call the “anti-Regency”—a book set in Regency England, but written from an American’s perspective. My heroine is from Washington, DC, and was there when the British burned the city. She travels to London to inquire after the fate of her brother, a sailor who was impressed into the British Navy. To say she’s not particularly fond of all things British would be to understate the matter. But her questions draw her into a web of lies, conspiracy and danger, and she must decide if she can trust the British official who might be working with her … or against her.

An e-book version is available on both Amazon’s and Mills and Boon’s UK sites, so it will be interesting to see if I sell any books in Britain—and what the readers’ reactions are!

Do you have a favorite colonial place you like to visit and why?

Jamestown, the place that started the whole thing. Those early colonists were thousands of miles away from everything familiar—and they were totally on their own. They had no army, no police force, no one to call if things went wrong. And things often went wrong in those first few years. How could they not? They had no idea what to expect or how to prepare. Every time I visit Jamestown, I’m amazed at the courage of those people.

Here is a link to CJ's trailer.

C.J., do you have a favorite colonial recipe you enjoy?  Would you care to share it with CQ readers?  Readers, you can find C.J.’s recipe for homemade noodles this coming Sunday on CQ.

Where do you live and what colonial places you have in your state?

I live in Southeastern Virginia, so finding colonial sites is almost as easy as stepping out my back door.

Giveaway:  CQ is giving away a copy of Redeeming the Rogue. Leave a comment with your email address for a chance to win! It is available for purchase at Amazon and CBD in paperback and Kindle versions.