Candace Simar's Blog

On Friday November 7th, my new book launched into the world. Thank you to everyone who came to the Brainerd Library to help celebrate MONTANA MATRIMONIAL NEWS. The reviews are already trickling in. One person said it is my best book yet. Another described it was a “fun read” that kept her laughing. The Kirkus Review compared it to John Steinbeck’s CANNERY ROW. Please let me know your thoughts. MONTANA MATRIMONIAL NEWS is a novel of interconnected short stories about prairie homesteaders looking for wives in personal ads. Through it all, the old doctor woman offers advice and cures for every situation. “My cures work if you can stand them.”

Michael Zimmer’s blog about the newspaper, MONTANA MATRIMONIAL NEWS, was my inspiration for writing this new book. My brain lit on fire after learning about his historical newspaper that was dedicated to personal ads in the 19th century—similar to modern day E Harmony websites.[image error]

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If you missed the Brainerd event, you have another chance. Craig Nagel and I will do a joint book event at the Pequot Lakes Library this Wednesday, November 19th at 2pm. We’re going to interview each other and discuss MONTANA MATRIMONIAL NEWS and Craig’s new book, VANISHING POINT. It should be a most interesting conversation. I’ve been jotting down questions to ask.

[image error]On Saturday, November 8th, I participated in the Lake Country Journal poetry reading at Central Lakes College. What a fun event!

Then on Sunday, November 9th, we traveled to the Old Depot in Duluth for the Northeast Minnesota Book Awards. Was I surprised that SISTER LUMBERJACK won the fiction category. I’m still smiling. Thank you to the Lake Superior Writers for facilitating and hosting the event.

 

MONTANA MATRIMONIAL NEWS NOW AVAILABLE!

Digger and his brother homestead on adjoining claims near Nickelbo, Dakota Territory. They search for wives in the Montana Matrimonial Newspaper.  It’s risky to agree to marry a stranger, but the men are lonely and isolated on their claims. Told in interconnected stories, MONTANA MATRIONIAL NEWS reveals life on the frontier in all its struggles. Doctor Gamla, the almost-doctor of Nickelbo, delivers babies and treats all manner of maladies while dishing out advice. “My cures work if you can stand them,” she says.

Buy the book at Bookshop.org and support local bookstores! CLICK HERE

You are invited to a book launch at the Brainerd Library on Friday, November 7.  Doors open at 1pm with a program at 1:30pm.  Refreshments will be served.

It’s been great working with the good people at North Star Press of St. Cloud and  Blue Cottage Agency. Thanks to Sheila O’Connor and the participants of Camp Candace who helped critique my efforts. Also, thanks to my sister, Angela Foster, who edited MONTANA MATRIMONIAL NEWS. Hope to see you at the launch.

Montana Matrimonial News: Loneliness gnaws and chews like the relentless prairie wind. Dakota homesteader, Digger Dancy, props his feet in the oven and waits for the storm to end. His brother, George, barges into the soddy in a swirl of blowing snow. George announces he will abandon his claim to seek a wife. He can’t stand the loneliness. Digger slaps a stack of old newspapers on the table and convinces him to place an ad for a correspondence bride in the Montana Matrimonial News.

Doctor Gamla, the almost-doctor and midwife, treats George’s frostbite, and offers a cure for his melancholia. She tells of two sisters living in tar-paper shacks along the Mad Dog River. The brothers cannot imagine how Doctor Gamla’s cure will change their lives.

Nickelbo’s whole world is wheat. The homesteaders talk about crops, worry about the weather, complain about prices, and dream what they’ll buy after the harvest. Asa Wainwright busts sod with a grasshopper plow. Ingrid Larson dallies over planting to avoid her sister’s wedding. Drunken Oscar Borgom gets lost in a storm on the way to the outhouse. Emma Wilson kneels in the cellar and prays for the hailstorm to miss their farm. Sunniva hauls buffalo bones into town with a team of mules. Skeeter Jorgenson plots for his correspondence bride to arrive in time for the harvest festival.

Through it all, Doctor Gamla delivers babies, treats ailments, and offers cures and advice. “My cures work if you can stand them.”

Pequot Lakes author, Candace Simar, likes to imagine how things might have been. Her historical fiction combines her love of history with her Scandinavian heritage. Simar has been recognized by a Spur Award from Western Writers of America, a Will Rogers Gold Medallion, a Peacemaker Award from Western Fictioneers, and Laura Awards for Short Fiction. SISTER LUMBERJACK received the Midwest Book Award, was a finalist for the Willa Literary Awards in Historical Fiction, and took 3rd place in the Catholic Novel category of the Catholic Media Awards.

Vickie Smith kindly agreed to let me repost her blog from my book Launch for Sister Lumberjack.  She surprised me with a visit at last week’s book signing at Fitger’s Book Store in Duluth. It’s always fun to find readers who like my work. Click on this link for the full review. Thanks Vickie!

Book Launch of Sister Lumberjack by Candace Simar (Release Date April 16, 2024) _ Writing Near the Lake

 

How amazing to see ESCAPE TO FORT ABERCROMBIE translated into German and English. THANK YOU EK-2 Publishing for supporting my work. Seeing this is a dream come true.

Indians kidnap Mama and little Elsa. Fourteen-year-old Ryker Landstad promises his dying father to take the nine-year-old twins to safety. Despite the danger, they endeavor to reach Fort Abercrombie, trailed by deadly enemies.

Ryker Landstad had aspirations of fleeing their prairie homestead to join his older brother, Martin, who is serving in the Union Army. However, tragedy befalls them when Ryker and the twins discover their father wounded and their pregnant mother and baby Elsa abducted by the Sioux.
Before he dies, their father urges Ryker to fetch help from a neighbor.
After overcoming life-threatening situations, they finally reach Fort Abercrombie, only to find it under siege by 500 Sioux warriors.
Will the children be united with their beloved mother and their baby sister?
“I read Pommes de Terre from Candace Simar. This is a very vivid telling of a tragic American story. I’ve long been wanting something in fiction about the Great Sioux Uprising and her work is the best I have seen.”
Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove.

Candace Simar won numerous prestigious awards, including the Will Rogers Gold Medallion and a Spur Award. She takes the reader right back to the days of the pioneers. Simar writes gripping tales with evocative clarity about times of hardship and hope that built the USA.
Join Ryker and his siblings now as they battle for survival in an unforgiving land during the times of the great Sioux uprising.

Buy the Book

 

I finished my upcoming book, Montana Matrimonial News.  North Star Press of Saint Cloud Minnesota will release it fall of 2025. I’m encouraged by the comments of beta readers: “I hated to put it down; It kept me glued to the page; evocative and captivating; and your best work yet.”

Montana Matrimonial News was inspired by a blog about newspapers in the 19th century dedicated to personal ads, similar to online dating today. Homesteaders were stuck on their claims in the middle of nowhere, and unable to find wives. Thus the Montana Matrimonial News and other newspapers brought men and women together. Michael Zimmer, a fellow Western Writer of America writer and author of The Poacher’s Daughter, wrote the blog. Look him up. His books are wonderful and I really enjoy his newsletter.

 

 

Escape to Fort Abercrombie has been out of print since its publisher, Five Star Cengage, went out of business in 2022. Happily, it has been picked up by EK-2 Publishing our of Germany. A German translation will be released in the fall of 2025 and an English reprint will be out this summer. What a thrill to see it translated into German, something I’ve long wanted. Thanks EK-2 Publishing and Manuela Schneider for making this happen.

My publicist Krista Soukup of Blue Cottage Agency recently asked me to read and review The Irish Girl by Ashley Sweeney, another Blue Cottage Agency author. I found it exceptional.

The Irish Girl‘s exquisite descriptions, vivid characters, and gripping storyline transport’s readers to a time and place where one misstep spells disaster. A Great Read! I recommend to Historical Fiction lovers especially those interested in Irish Immigration. Here is more about my fellow Women Writing the West and Western Writers of America author, Ashley Sweeney and her latest book:

From multi-award-winning historical fiction author Ashley E. Sweeney comes a family saga about the Irish immigrant experience spanning New York, Chicago, and Colorado so compelling that, USA Today best-selling author Kelli Estes says, “I read this story in one sitting.”

Feisty and resilient, thirteen-year-old Mary Agnes Coyne travels alone from Ireland to the United States in 1886 in Ashley E. Sweeney’s newest, The Irish Girl.

Forced from her family home after an accusation of incest, Mary Agnes endures an arduous sea voyage across the Atlantic with only a few pounds to her name and a letter to a parish priest. From the tenements of New York to the rough alleys of Chicago, Mary Agnes once and again suffers the bitter taste of prejudice for the crime of being poor, Catholic, and Irish.

Faced with another tragedy, she moves west to Colorado to begin life anew and there ponders her future.

Filled with lilting prose that Kirkus Reviews calls “poignant . . . vivid and compelling,” Sweeney again introduces a strong female protagonist whose experience mirror those of many of our grandmothers and great-grandmothers as they carved out a home in new land.

She Writes Press
December 10, 2024

Length: 344 pages
ISBN13: 9781647427764

Pre-order at:
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Target
BookShop
and your favorite bookseller!

Ashley Sweeny is a multi-award-winning author. Her previous novels, Eliza Waite, Answer Creek, and Hardland, have won a total of 17 awards, including the Nancy Pearl Book Award, Independent Press Award, WILLA Literary Award, and New Mexico-Arizona Book Award. Sweeney, a native New Yorker and graduate of Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts, spends winters in Tucson and summers in the Pacific Northwest.

 

Thank you, Ashley, for a wonderful read!

Candace

 

 

 

It’s wonderful to receive feedback from readers. Last night a reader from North Dakota sent me the following: “I finished Sister Lumberjack two nights ago. I slowed down as I felt sad coming to the end. I have already shared it with a friend. Love it!”

I also received a letter from a woman in Little Falls, Minnesota: “I want to write and tell you how much I enjoyed your book, Sister Lumberjack. I thoroughtly enjoyed it. All three main characters were well-developed and their stories intertwined in a way that made me want to keep reading. ….I have recommended it to several others.”

Yesterday, a woman stopped me at the library and told me how much her book club enjoyed discussing Sister Lumberjack.

Writing is a lonely endeavor. Thank you for both reading and commenting on Sister Lumberjack and my other titles. Online reviews at Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Good Reads, and others are most welcome to smaller writers like me. Thank you for getting the word out!

History Through Fiction Releases New Anthology 3/1/25 and my story, Those Bereaved, is included. Yay!

I’m thrilled to announce that my short story, Julesburg Burning, is included in the anthology LUNGERS, LAWDOGS, AND LEGENDS released this week by Saddlebag Dispatches.  If you’re looking for westerns set in Colorado, this book is for you.