July 1851: A Month That Changed the Denny Party’s Future
By late July 1851, the Denny Party had been on the Oregon Trail for more than three months. They had crossed the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers, followed the Platte and Sweetwater Rivers westward, traversed the desert to the Snake River, endured hailstorms, nursed sick children, and left the familiar landscapes of Illinois far behind. Yet […]
Into Draft 3: Finding a New Balance
It’s been a couple of months since I wrote about my work-in-progress. The good news is that Draft 2 is finished (and didn’t take as long as I thought it would). In Draft 2 I focused on addressing what I saw as the major problems in the manuscript. I worked through comments from my critique […]
America at 250: Out of Many, One
Last Saturday was our nation’s 250th birthday. Along with many other people, I’ve been thinking about the question of who is an American. For me, the answer is simple—an American is anyone born here or who has been naturalized. Although my own family history in the U.S. stretches back for generations, I see no reason […]
New Lenses: Seeing the World Differently
I wrote after my first cataract surgery about that experience. Later in June, I had the second cataract removed. I still haven’t had my eyes refracted so I can order new glasses, and I expected my distance vision to be poor at this stage. What I didn’t expect was how much my view of the […]
Denny Party: Through Mountains and Desert
By June 1851, the Denny Party had already traveled more than a thousand miles from their homes in Illinois. The excitement of beginning their journey west had given way to the daily realities of the Oregon Trail—dust, illness, exhaustion, and uncertainty about what lay ahead. Whooping cough continued to trouble two of the children in […]
Treasured Time with Family Visitors
This past weekend, my son and his wife visited from Brooklyn, New York. They are very good about making the trip to see us, but their schedules only permit a couple of visits each year. I understand the challenge. When I lived in Kansas City and my parents lived in the Pacific Northwest, I couldn’t […]
Living Between Two Worlds: One Cataract Gone
Last week, I had cataract surgery on my right eye. The left eye is scheduled for three weeks later. The morning after surgery, I discovered that the walls of our apartment are bright white—not yellowish white. I’d been told colors would seem brighter after cataract surgery, but I had scoffed. I thought the colors I […]
The Rain Falls Mainly on the Plain
My father used to tell me, “It never rains in the Pacific Northwest.” That was when he lived on the Olympic Peninsula, where mornings were often damp and gray. Yet by afternoon the sun frequently appeared. And even when it rained, it was usually drizzle—not the thunderstorms, downpours, and hailstorms I was accustomed to in […]
The Denny Party: From the Missouri River Along the Platte
I’ve written before about emigrants crossing the Missouri River at Kanesville, Iowa (now Council Bluffs). The Denny party made that crossing on May 6, 1851. Earlier that spring, hundreds of emigrants crowded the riverbanks there, preparing to leave the settled East behind and begin the long journey west. The Dennys had already encountered hardship before […]
My Thoughts on Finishing Another First Draft
This past week, I finished the first draft of my current work-in-progress. I began this book in August 2025, just after publishing A Life of Joy. That novel was the last in a seven-book series centered on the same families. By then, I knew most of my characters well—I had spent more than fifteen years […]