— Genevieve Graham, #1 bestselling author of The Secret Keeper
— Genevieve Graham, bestselling author of The Secret Keeper
— Maureen Jennings, Order of Canada, award-winning author of Murdoch Mystery Books
— Maia Caron, bestselling author of The Last Secret
— Ellen Keith, award-winning author of The Dutch Wife
Firstly, I’m descended from several generations of homesteaders. While reading about the flood of newcomers to Western Canada in the early 1900s, I was shocked to discover that the Canadian government never allowed single women to claim a free homestead! This was in contrast to the United States, where single women were homesteading by the thousands.
I immediately decided that the heroine of my new novel would be a single woman named Flora Craigie who jumps off a moving train to escape her abusive husband, and finds a way to claim her own homestead on the Alberta prairie.
I imagined Flora to look something like Maude Fealey, an American stage actress. This photograph was taken in 1905, the same year my novel begins. It was the peak of the homesteading movement, when settlers were pouring into the West, primarily from Europe, Ontario and the United States.
The novel opens with Flora jumping off a moving train in the middle of what is now Alberta, one of hundreds of trains bringing tens of thousands of homesteaders to Western Canada. The coming of the railway was essential to the success of every small community, and the intrigue around where the steel was headed has a direct impact on Flora and her friends.
No, her neighbour is Peggy Penrose, a widow who arrives from Wales to homestead, with three young children. This photo of a Scottish immigrant sitting on the dock at Quebec City shortly after arriving reminds me of my character Peggy. This woman looks scared to death, and I don’t blame her!
Yes, I used several real historic figures, although they are all fictionalized to some extent. One of them was Alix Hall Crofton Westhead, who played a large role in my novel. She was the first white woman settler in the area. She and her husband Charles started the Quarter Circle One Ranch in 1892. The village of Alix, Alberta was named after her.
That’s the best part! I read some sixty books about homesteaders in Canada and the United States, collecting a vast body of research notes. I contacted archivists, museums and historians. And I spent hours on the internet looking at old photos.
As usual, women’s stories were few and far between. I was so thankful to find this book edited by Dr. Sarah Carter, a history professor at the University of Alberta. She has written extensively about women homesteaders in Western Canada and the United States. This one was particularly helpful: Montana Women Homesteaders: A Field of One’s Own, published by Farcountry Press in Helena, Montana.
The photograph on the cover of her book is Petrina Peterson Pogreba, a homesteader at Box Elder, Montana, Courtesy of the Ralph McKinney Family. Don’t you love her expression, so shy and proud? In my novel, Flora’s shack looks much like this one.
