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Sarah J. McNeal
Grandfather McNeal’s Trunk
It’s funny how an everyday, ordinary things we take
for granted can set off a whole series of stories. Such is the case with my
Grandfather McNeal’s trunk.
One day I was just hanging out playing a tune on my
harmonica. The harmonica was one given to me by my dad years ago when I was a
kid. We used to play tunes together like Shenandoah, a favorite of mine. I had
my feet propped up on my Grandfather McNeal’s old trunk where mementos were
kept of each generation from way, way back including pictures, old watches,
pipes and rodeo posters from Ranch 101. I was struck with an idea of how
amazing and wonderful it would be if everything in the family trunk was new.
What if I could go back to the time my father talked about, a time when townspeople
socialized at church picnics and listened to a radio show at a friend’s house
or went to the local amusement park for a night of fun? It seemed so cozy, so
comfortable and peaceful.
My mental wheels began to turn. What if my heroine
found a trunk like Grandfather McNeal’s, full of history and mystery? What
if she tried on some clothes and a wedding band and accidently fell into the
trunk? And what if that trunk possessed the magic to take her back to a pivotal
point in history and she met the love of her life?
That family trunk inspired me to write Harmonica Joe’s
Reluctant Bride. I had no idea that that book would lead me to write the
sequel, For Love of Banjo, and then more stories about the generations of
Wildings that would follow. Well, such is the magic of my grandfather’s trunk.
I am so happy that, even though I was only 7 when he
died, I had a chance to know Grandfather McNeal. He was a post Civil War
baby, born in 1866. I think about that sometimes and think how amazing it was
that I had the chance to know him. He was an educated man, a teacher who had to
earn his “real” living painting barns and houses. Because he never owned a
horse or a car, he walked everywhere. I remember him as patient and kind, a
very well-read man with old fashioned manners who still wore suspenders until
he died. The trunk he thoughtfully put together, has been my inspiration for
the Wildings of Wyoming and The Violin, a 1927 time travel story based on the
life and death of my dad’s middle brother, John Douglas McNeal.
I think many of us draw our stories from our
histories, those stories passed down to us or discovered by accident. What were
some of your stories created from your family’s history?
Harmonica
Joe ’s Reluctant Bride
Blurb:
A
haunted plantation… A trunk… And a date with destiny.
When Lola Barton inherits a rundown plantation, she
believes her life has finally taken a positive turn. But, when she finds a
mysterious trunk in the attic, it takes her into the past and to a man with
dark secrets—and she’s married to him.
BUY Links:
FLY AWAY HEART
The Great Depression…Rum Runners and Old Fears…Love Against the
Odds
Blurb:
Lilith Wilding can’t remember a time when she didn’t love the
English born Robin Pierpont, but she knows he loves another so she hides her
feelings beneath a hard veneer of self-protection.
Robin Pierpont dreams of flying airplanes and winning the heart of
the one he loves, but when he gets involved in illegal rum running to help a
friend, those dreams seem to turn into just a fantasy. When he is called upon
to face his worst fear to save Lilith’s life, his fate may be sealed in death.
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Sarah McNeal is a
multi-published author of several genres including time travel, paranormal,
western and historical fiction. She is a retired ER nurse who lives in North
Carolina with her four-legged children, Lily, the Golden Retriever and Liberty,
the cat. Besides her devotion to writing, she also has a great love of music
and plays several instruments including violin, bagpipes, guitar and harmonica.
Her books and short stories may be found at Publishing by Rebecca Vickery, Victory
Tales Press, Prairie Rose Publications and Painted Pony Books, an imprint of
Prairie Rose Publications. She welcomes you to her website at
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