I’m so excited to announce that my latest book is now available. June Rise a novel set in Western Missouri during the Civil War era, has been published by Burnt District Press. It is the story of Amanda Blue Hill, who is blown out of her mother’s arms in a tornado and set down in a basket in Shoal Creek, Clay County, Missouri. She is found and adopted by the Hill family, who name her Amanda Blue Hill, because she was so cold she was blue when Joel Hill found her in the creek. She is known as Bluesey to her family. Bluesey’s origins are a mystery. With dark hair and a tan complexion, she is taken for the child of a runaway slave or a Shawnee Indian. Her adoptive parents don’t bother about her background, they are so happy to have found her alive and well.

The Hills of Clay County are not slaveowners. However, Bluesey’s uncle Braymon, who lives on a plantation in the area known as Little Dixie, owns several, including a young girl about Bluesey’s age, named Onie. The two girls become friends, and as teenagers they attempt a daring escape for Onie, crossing the Missouri River during the June rise when the river is high.

Bluesey lives through the guerilla war between the Missouri bushwhackers, confederate sympathizers, and the Kansas jayhawkers, abolitionists from across the border. Her family is attacked by bushwhackers because they are against the owning of slaves, and by the jayhawkers who believe that Bluesey is the daughter of a runaway slave and want to take her to Kansas to freedom. She works in a make-shift hospital at William Jewell College in Liberty after the Battle of Blue Mills landing. She falls in love with an abolitionist from St. Louis, and later becomes engaged to a Confederate soldier. Throughout it all, Bluesey holds onto her friendship with Onie, who manages to escape and becomes a contraband laundress for the Union Army.

With emancipation and the end of the war in sight, Bluesey and Onie travel together to Nebraska where they become homesteaders.

I loved doing the research for June Rise. I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri and went to William Jewell College, so I knew a little about the history of this area. My research brought me so many fascinating stories of the people of Western Missouri, in whose fields a bloody war was being waged, neighbor against neighbor. June Rise is my fifth book and my second novel. Watch for a Goodreads Giveaway soon.