Author Linda Hubalek On Progressing To a Better Life

Please join me in welcoming author Linda Hubalek to Thoughts in Progress today as the special guest blogger as she makes a stop on her virtual WOW Blog Tour.

Linda is the author of the historical fiction series, TRAIL OF THREAD, which is just being released in e-books. The tour is in celebration of the e-book release of the series, which takes place in Kansas during the Civil War era. This year we are commemorating the 150th anniversary of both Kansas and the Civil War.

In celebration of this release, Linda is offering one Kindle copy of the e-book TRAIL OF THREAD to one lucky visitor who comments on her post between today and  8 p.m. (EST) Friday, June 10. Be sure to include your e-mail address in your comment, if it’s not included in your profile.

Linda stop by today to talk about ‘Thoughts in Progress for the Kansas Pioneers.’

Thoughts in Progress. Everyone has to think through things in their mind to move on, or progress to the next step.

I’m author Linda Hubalek and all of my historical fiction books weave a story about how my pioneer characters have thought about progressing to a better life by moving to Kansas to homestead land. 

In TRAIL OF THREAD, Deborah and John Pieratt (featured in the first book of the TRAIL OF THREAD series), left Kentucky in 1854 when the Territory of Kansas opened to homesteaders. They were part of the thousands of families that packed wagons and headed west for the promise of a new life. This progression leads them to own land for their family of six young children.

THIMBLE OF SOIL, the second book in the series, features Margaret Ralston Kennedy. She was a widow who moved with eight of her thirteen children from Ohio to the Territory Kansas in 1855. She was dedicated to the cause of the North, and helped with the Underground Railroad in both Ohio and Kansas. Margaret’s progression of moving fleeing slaves gave them a change for a safe free life.

Orphaned Maggie Kennedy, portrayed in STITCH OF COURAGE, the last book in the series, traveled to Kansas looking for her brothers as the states fought out the history of the Civil War. While this might seem as a step backwards due to the times, it leads her to marriage and a family of her own.

The TRAIL OF THREAD series, written in the form of letters the women have written back home to loved ones, show the thoughts, and process them went through to provide a better life not only their families, but also the state and nation during the troubling times of the Civil War.

Are you ready to progress into this pioneer series? Please look at my website and books for a new adventure.  Many thanks from the Kansas prairie…where you’ll love the journey to Kansas…Linda K. Hubalek

Linda, thanks so much for guest blogging today. The courage it took these families during this period is amazing.  I am in awe of what they had to go through and how they survived. Wishing you much success with your writing and this great series.

Here’s a brief blurb for TRAIL OF THREAD: Taste the dust of the road and feel the wind in your face as you travel with a Kentucky family by wagon trail to the new territory of Kansas in 1854. Find out what it was like for thousands of families who made the cross-country journey into the unknown.

In this first book of the TRAIL OF THREAD series, in the form of letters; Deborah Pieratt describes the scenery, the everyday events on the trail, and the task of taking care of her family. Stories of humor and despair, along with her ongoing remarks about camping, cooking, and quilting make you feel as if you pulled up stakes and are traveling with the Pieratts too.

Excerpt: January 24, 1854 . . .

“I don’t usually pay attention when the men talk about politics, but I automatically listened while I laid the dishes of food in front of them. They were discussing the new government bill that proposes to open up prairie Indian land, west of Missouri, to white settlement. A bill called the Territory of Platte failed last spring due to Southern opposition. Now an amended bill, breaking up the land into two sections, the Territory of Nebraska and the Territory of Kansas, is being discussed. Problems of slavery being legal in the new territories are being hotly debated between the Northern and Southern states. It sounds like the government has determined that the people who settle the territories can decide whether they want to allow slavery in their new states.

The traveler carefully pulled a folded newspaper clipping out of his front jacket and handed it to John. Holding it up to the candlelight, John read out loud that when the bill passes in the spring, as they predict it will, a man can claim whatever land he wants in these new territories for about a dollar an acre.

Kentucky was a wilderness in the early 1800’s, when John’s grandfather, Valentine Pieratt, moved his family from Maryland. He sailed across the sea in 1780 from France to fight in the Revolutionary War, decided to stay in the New World, and moved westward to a new wilderness whenever the area he lived in became populated.

Because land is getting scarce here for new generations, the idea of plenty of cheap land immediately stirred our men’s interest. I believe the adventure of their grandfather haunts their thinking, too.

When John finished reading that article and looked up into my eyes, I knew his mind was set to move as soon as possible. He wanted to blaze his own trail to the new territory and be ready to stake his claim when the land opened up. We are partners in life, but I knew I had no say in this move.

Today is my thirty-third birthday. Where will I be on the next? Will my children survive the trip and be around me to help celebrate it?”
Now for a bit of background on the author. Linda’s sixth grade teacher assigned her class the traditional “What I Want to be When I Grow Up”. Linda has an untraditional answer…she didn’t want to be a nurse, a teacher, or a mom. She wanted to be a farmer! Linda’s sixth grade dream came true when she graduated from Kansas State University with a degree in Agriculture/Horticulture and spent years doing agronomy research and eventually starting her own business Prairie Flower Creations.
 
Much like her own ancestors headed West, Linda found herself in California tending a cement garden and longing for the fields of Kansas. Linda “visited” her beloved Kansas by writing the TRAIL OF THREAD series about Kansas pioneer women.  Although Linda is back in Kansas (growing bison this time, not prairie flowers), she’s still writing about Kansas women. Her FOURTH series, the KANSAS QUILTER series will be released late this year.

For more on Linda and her writing, visit her website at http://www.lindahubalek.com/, follow her on Twitter at https://twitter.com/#!/LindaHubalek, visit her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/lindahubalekbooks, or contact her at linda@lindahubalek.com

What are your thoughts on the pioneer life? Would you have liked to have lived during that era? What would be the best and the worst thing about it? Thanks, as always for stopping by.