Please join me in welcoming fellow Women Writing the West member – the incredible Mary Trimble!
Welcome, Mary!
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Maureen has been such a fun book to write, I almost hated to see it end! Although
I don’t consider it a sequel to my previous Coming-of-Age contemporary-western novels, Rosemount or McClellan’s Bluff, it’s about a character, Maureen, who appears in both those previous books. Maureen has haunted me for years—her story still needed to be told.
In my first book, Rosemount, sixteen year-old Leslie Cahill rebels when her widower father announces he’s sending her to a private girls’ school in Spokane. A good student and musically gifted, Leslie loves her ranch life and riding her beloved Appaloosa, Polly. In Rosemount’s sequel, McClellan’s Bluff, Leslie, then seventeen, is flattered when a neighboring cowboy, eleven years older, shows interest in her. He treats her like a woman, not just another kid. But danger lurks.
Throughout these two novels, the Cahill housekeeper, Maureen Gardner, plays an important role in the family.
In the years following Rosemount’s and McClellan’s Bluff’s publications I have often thought about Maureen and how life was for her on the Cahill ranch. Her story was yet to be told.
In Maureen, Leslie is seven when Maureen comes to the family; Leslie’s brother Wade is seventeen. Their father John, still overwhelmed with grief from the tragic death of his wife and with the burden of managing the family, struggles to keep things running on their large eastern Washington cattle ranch. Maureen covers a ten-year period.
Thank you, Shanna, for the opportunity to appear on your lovely blog.
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It’s lovely to have you join us here, Mary! Thank you! Get your copy of Maureen today!
Mary E Trimble is the author of six books including four works of fiction and two memoirs. To learn more about Mary E. Trimble’s work, please visit
http://www.MaryTrimbleBooks.com
