May Member News

Alethea Williams, Western historical Náápiikoan Winter is partially based on the writings of Canadian explorer and mapmaker David Thompson. The novel follows an abducted New Mexican woman and a Hudson’s Bay trader and their entanglements with the Piikáni people at the base of the Rocky Mountains in the final years of the eighteenth century. 

Sarah Byrn Rickman, WASP of the Ferry Command, (University of North Texas Press). The little-known story of 303 Women Airforce Service Pilots who initially were employed to move small aircraft from the factories to the flight training bases. By the time the war ramped up as 1944 began, the women had proved themselves and they began to ferry single-engine, single-seat pursuit (fighter) aircraft to the docks for shipment abroad to the battlefront. Forty of these women relate bits of their own experiences, bringing a personal touch to one of World War II’s lesser known but critical chapters.

Jennifer J. Lawrence, Soap Suds Row: The Bold Lives of Army Laundresses, 1802-1876. Not camp followers, but officially on the rolls of the U.S. Army, laundresses were unorthodox, spirited women in the midst of military action. Heroines, eccentrics, saviors, spies, prostitutes, cross-dressers, wives, mothers—they are a side of the military you’ve never read about.

AWARDS

Janet Jensen, Gabriel's Daughters, won the Body, Mind and Spirit award from Southwest Book Design and Production. It received a silver medal from Readers Favorites. It was also a finalist in Religious Fiction and Cultural Fiction in Foreword Magazine's IndieFab contest.

Sarah Byrn Rickman received two awards from the 119-year-old National League of American Pen Women, Inc. She was awarded First Place in the Vinnie Ream Letters Competition for her forthcoming WASP biography Finding Dorothy Scott, the story of a 23-year-old pilot who died in a midair collision while flying for the WASP in World War II. Sarah also won first place in the Eudora Welty Memorial Award for Fiction for her WASP novel Flight to Destiny, published 2014. While still a manuscript, Flight to Destiny won First Place in Historical Fiction at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference in 2000.

Penny Rafferty Hamilton has earned a Bessie Minor Swift Foundation grant to partner with the Grand County Historical Association on the creation of a new children’s history book called A to Z: Your Grand County History Alphabet. Hamilton is the author of two Grand County history books, Granby Then & Now 1905-2005 and Around Granby. All profits from the new book will benefit Grand County historic preservation projects. 

 

Susan Tweit has been awarded a fellowship at the Women’s International Study Center in Santa Fe to work on her next book, which includes a one-month residency at the historic Acequia Madre house. 

Andrea Jones' Blog, "Between Urban and Wild" won top honors in the blog category of the 2016 Writing Awards sponsored by the Colorado Authors' League (coloradoauthors.org). Comments from the judges praised the site for "Delicious writing, gentle and deep." Andrea blogs about people and land, gardening, wildlife, weather, horses, and writing from her home place in central Colorado.

March Member News

What a great lineup of new novels and awards this month! Congratulations to you all!

Janet Fisher, The Shifting Winds (Globe Pequot Press/Two Dot) Jennie Haviland’s father takes the family west over the Oregon Trail in 1842, tearing Jennie away from her prestigious academy in New York and forcing her to face a lonely wilderness across the continent. In Oregon she meets two young men, handsome British Hudson's Bay Company clerk Alan Radford and brash American mountain man Jake Johnston. The two vie for her as their nations vie for this rich contested territory, but Jennie wants choices of her own.

Bonnie Hobbs, Sweet Justice. Wounded by her fiance's betrayal, Rachel Logan returns to her father's ranch in Arizona Territory determined to live an independent life. Kol Hawk comes home after ten years in Yuma Prison for attempting to kill Rachel's father, believing him responsible for the deaths of a Pima woman and her daughter. As they come together to find the truth, can they also find solace in each other? 

 

Sarah Byrn Rickman, WASP of the Ferry Command (University of North Texas Press) is the personalized story of the women pilots who, when qualified male pilots were in short supply early in World War II, volunteered to fly brand new trainer aircraft from factories to the training fields in Texas and elsewhere. Then the women's job changed dramatically when, in January 1944, they were needed to deliver sleek, powerful P-51 fighter aircraft to the docks at Newark, NJ, for shipment to the war zone. Ultimately, those P-51s were the key to the victory over the German Reich because they had the range to escort and protect the four-engine bombers on raids all the way from England to Berlin and back. 

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AWARDS

Julie Weston, Moonshadows, won Finalist in the May Sarton Literary Award in the category of historical fiction.

Donis Casey, All Men Fear Me, is a finalist in the fiction category for the 2016 Oklahoma Book Award.

Nancy Bo Flood, Water Runs Through This Book (Fulcrum, photographs by Jan Sonnenmair), an informational book about the wonder of water and the need for conservation, has been recognized as a Green Earth qualified book.


 

Nancy Bo Flood, Soldier Sister, Fly Home, (Charlesbridge, cover art by Shonto Begay), is a Junior Library Guild selection,. This contemporary middle-grade novel is a celebration of family, riding horses pell-mell in the dark, sharing secrets with a sister, and the beauty of the Navajo desert.

Sandra Dallas, The Last Midwife (St. Martin's Press), Winner Traditional Novel, Western Writers of America Spur Awards. 

Jane Kirkpatrick, The Memory Weaver (Revell) earned the Finalist Spur status for Best
Historical Novel.