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| Author Linda Hubalek |
Hello everyone! I’m Linda Hubalek and although I written books
about pioneer women for a couple of decades, this is my first time working
with Prairie Rose Publications, and the first time posting on the PRP blog.
My story The Perfect Homestead Bride will be in PRP’s new book, Lassoing a Groom, an anthology of six new stories from six award winning authors.
First here’s a little bit about me and my writing career.
While growing up, I always planned to
be a farmer, like my parents and European ancestors who homesteaded the Kansas
prairie over a century ago. But marrying an engineer changed my plans—and my
state of residence for a few decades.
To ease the homesickness for soil and
family, I wrote stories about the pioneer women that homestead my family farms
in Kansas. What resulted is four book series, Butter
in the Well, Trail
of Thread, Planting
Dreams, and the Kansas
Quilter. These series combine
facts, fiction, photos and maps to give readers an intimate glimpse of life in
the 1800's.
Another move in the mid 1990’s brought
us back to central Kansas. We bought farm land, planted it back to prairie and
stocked it with bison. This finally fulfilled my goal of connecting to the land
much the same way my ancestors would have seen it when they first arrived in
Kansas.
My passion for the frontier past has
drawn me into writing a new western romance series featuring Kansas’ rough and
rugged cattle town days and the women that lived in those times.
Here’s a summary of The Perfect Homestead Bride, plus the start of the story.
Gussie Hamner paid cash for the
abandoned Kansas prairie homestead near Ellsworth, Kansas with winnings her
horse Nutcracker won against cowboys coming off the cattle trails. She plans to
raise horses on her ranch, but disturbing happenings around the place and with
her animals cause Gussie to worry about the safety of all that is dear to her.
Noah Wilerson left his sod house in
Kansas to travel to Illinois, planning to marry and bring his sweetheart back
to his new homestead. After finding his intended already married, Noah travels
home to find it’s been taken over by a horsewoman in trousers.
Pushed together by well-meaning
family, Gussie and Noah must work together to finish the homestead he started,
but she bought to make into a perfect home and ranch for the future family
she’s been dreaming of. But danger
lurking from the past may sabotage their work and lives now—and in the future.
Here’s the start of The Perfect
Homestead Bride to whet your appetite.
This was the
second time Noah Wilerson had seen that thick blonde braid.
The first
time he saw that hair was three months ago in early May when he was at the
station, waiting for the train to take him to Illinois. A bunch of cowboys had
finished the long trail drive up from Texas and were celebrating with a horse
race. After getting the worked-up men and horses lined up halfway straight
across Main Street, someone fired a gun into the air and the group stormed down
the street, racing out of Ellsworth at a neck-breaking speed.
The group
raced out in a cloud of dust to a certain point marked in the prairie and
turned to gallop back to the finish line, which happened to be in front of the
depot, right where Noah stood on the boardwalk. A striking palomino paint mount
moved out of the oncoming dust to claim the lead and finish first.
The slender
rider wore his wide-brimmed hat low and tight on his head and had a red bandana
over his mouth to keep from eating dust on the run. Once the horse slowed down
and the rider turned his mount around, they pranced back to the finish line and
collected the $100 cash from the man in charge of holding prize money.
The rider
pulled down the scarf, ripped the hat off to wave in the air and gave a very feminine whooping holler. That’s when
Noah—and everyone else—saw the thick, blonde, two-foot braid flipping out of her hat and down her back.
That caused uproar
when the other riders realized a woman had bested them out of the race money. A
couple of riders jumped off their horses and tried to tear the female down from
her mount, but the gelding wouldn’t let anyone touch it, or his rider. The
officials decided the woman had won the race fair and square, so she loped out
of town with the money.
Now, three
months later, he was back from his unsuccessful trip, and that same tall female
with the braid had a rifle trained on his head. She looked like she could shoot
just about as well as she could ride that palomino paint horse. The only
trouble was, she was standing on the porch of his house.
Noah stared
at her, hoping she’d relax her stance and lower the rifle. She was a tall
woman, probably only a few inches shorter than his six-foot height. Both times
he’d seen the woman, who looked to be in her early twenties, she’d had on a
wide-brimmed hat to shade her fair skin.
Neither the
woman—dressed in men’s trousers—nor the gun wavered a quarter of an inch when
she yelled, “State your business, mister, or turn around and leave!”
Noah stood
there, dumbfounded, for a minute. He didn’t think he needed to yell, “Hello the
house,” since it was his own place.
—Excerpt from The Perfect Homestead Bride ©
2014 by Linda Hubalek.
What to find out what happens
next? Be sure to read this story and five more in the new Lassoing a Groom coming out this Tuesday!
