In 1941, Anna Harker is attacked by an ax-wielding assailant in the gold-bearing ridges bordering the Alaska Range. It is this moment of savagery that propels the people of Wild Rivers, Wild Rose. Anna’s lover, Wade Daniels, learns of the deaths of Anna’s husband and their worker, and he rushes to the hills to look for Anna and hunt the murderer. As she lies dying on the tundra, Anna relives the major events of her Alaska life while searching her memories for what could have led to the violence. And, decades later, an outsider named Billie Sutherland steps into a community still haunted by the murders. Plagued by her own ghosts, Billie delves into the past, opening old wounds. In this gripping novel by Sarah Birdsall, lives are laid bare and secrets ring out in the resonant Alaska Range foothills.
In 1941, Anna Harker is attacked by an ax-wielding assailant in the gold-bearing ridges bordering the Alaska Range. It is this moment of savagery that propels the people of Wild Rivers, Wild Rose. Anna’s lover, Wade Daniels, learns of the deaths of Anna’s husband and their worker, and he rushes to the hills to look for Anna and hunt the murderer. As she lies dying on the tundra, Anna relives the major events of her Alaska life while searching her memories for what could have led to the violence. And, decades later, an outsider named Billie Sutherland steps into a community still haunted by the murders. Plagued by her own ghosts, Billie delves into the past, opening old wounds. In this gripping novel by Sarah Birdsall, lives are laid bare and secrets ring out in the resonant Alaska Range foothills.
Rose's grandmother wants to teach Rose how to weave, but Rose is enjoying the beautiful day outside far too much to come in and learn. It is not until Grandma shows Rose how she has woven the elements of nature into her rug, that Rose wants to create a rug of her own. But now Grandma has spied a rainbow. Hand in hand, she and Rose head outside, and the next day, that rainbow reappears in Rosie's own rug. Just as the grandmother teaches Rose to weave the beauty of nature into her rugs, so the author weaves into this story the themes of creativity, the interplay of art and life, and the important gifts that are handed down through generations of women.
A big, opulent, full-bodied novel of love and war centering on John Hunt Morgan, the Confederate cavalry general whose fearless Raiders nearly turned the tide of the Civil War. Maps.
The finale to the sweeping, multi-generational saga that began with THE TEA ROSE and continued with THE WINTER ROSE. London, 1914. World War I looms on the horizon, women are fighting for the right to vote, and explorers are pushing the limits of endurance in the most forbidding corners of the earth. As the last golden days of summer give way to the gathering clouds of war, two men and one woman find their lives forever intertwined in a lethal web of forbidden loves, hidden loyalties, and dangerous lies. With myriad twists and turns, thrilling cliffhangers, and fabulous period detail and atmosphere, tHE WILD ROSE is a highly satisfying conclusion to the sweeping, multi-generational saga that began with the tea Rose and the Winter Rose - an unforgettable trilogy. Praise for the Rose trilogy:'truly seductive, hard to put down, filled with mystery, secret passions, unique locations, and a most engaging heroine ... captivates from the first page to the last' - Barbara taylor Bradford
For sheer bravado and style, no woman in the North or South rivaled the Civil War heroine Rose O’Neale Greenhow. Fearless spy for the Confederacy, glittering Washington hostess, legendary beauty and lover, Rose Greenhow risked everything for the cause she valued more than life itself. In this superb portrait, biographer Ann Blackman tells the surprising true story of a unique woman in history. “I am a Southern woman, born with revolutionary blood in my veins,” Rose once declared–and that fiery spirit would plunge her into the center of power and the thick of adventure. Born into a slave-holding family, Rose moved to Washington, D.C., as a young woman and soon established herself as one of the capital’s most charming and influential socialites, an intimate of John C. Calhoun, James Buchanan, and Dolley Madison. She married well, bore eight children and buried five, and, at the height of the Gold Rush, accompanied her husband Robert Greenhow to San Francisco. Widowed after Robert died in a tragic accident, Rose became notorious in Washington for her daring–and numerous–love affairs. But with the outbreak of the Civil War, everything changed. Overnight, Rose Greenhow, fashionable hostess, become Rose Greenhow, intrepid spy. As Blackman reveals, deadly accurate intelligence that Rose supplied to General Pierre G. T. Beauregard written in a fascinating code (the code duplicated in the background on the jacket of this book). Her message to Beauregard turned the tide in the first Battle of Bull Run, and was a brilliant piece of spycraft that eventually led to her arrest by Allan Pinkerton and imprisonment with her young daughter. Indomitable, Rose regained her freedom and, as the war reached a crisis, journeyed to Europe to plead the Confederate cause at the royal courts of England and France. Drawing on newly discovered diaries and a rich trove of contemporary accounts, Blackman has fashioned a thrilling, intimate narrative that reads like a novel. Wild Rose is an unforgettable rendering of an astonishing woman, a book that will stand with the finest Civil War biographies.
During much of his brief and troubled life, Victor Marion Rose was a walking anomaly. The scion of a venerable Texas farming and ranching family, he was widely reported to be unable to distinguish one horse from another. He fought for the Confederacy and endured imprisonment at Ohio’s notorious Camp Chase, yet he later bitterly decried the Civil War as utter folly for the South. His florid poetry often celebrated the feminine mystique and ideal as he considered it, yet he was infamously unfaithful and sometimes abusive in his relationships with women. He built a respected reputation as a journalist and historian, and at the same time, he struggled with alcoholism and bouts of deep depression. Born in 1842 as the third of thirteen children of a wealthy Victoria, Texas, planter, Victor Marion Rose served as publisher and editor of the Victoria Advocate from 1869 to 1873 before moving to Laredo—reportedly due to a scandalous love affair—where he edited the Laredo Times. He also wrote volumes of poetry and published several histories of South Texas and the biography of Gen. Ben McCulloch. Rose ultimately succumbed to pneumonia in February 1893. Louise S. O’Connor, a descendant of Victor Marion Rose, has mined family records and recorded family traditions about “Uncle Vic.” She carefully reviewed Rose’s collected papers, both in her personal possession and in the archives of the Briscoe Center for American History and other repositories. Wild Rose provides an intimate portrait of a complicated individual who, despite his frequently unsuccessful struggles with his demons, nevertheless left an important mark on Texas history and letters.
For fans of Kate Morton and Beatriz Williams, a highly atmospheric and suspenseful historical novel, set in the 1890s about a Scottish heiress who unexpectedly encounters her childhood friend in North America, five years after he disappeared from her family’s estate the night of a double murder. Nineteen-year-old Evelyn Ballantyre has rarely strayed from her family’s estate in the Scottish Borderlands, save for the occasional trip to Edinburgh, where her father, a respected magistrate, conducts his business—and affairs of another kind. Evelyn has always done her duty as a daughter, hiding her boredom and resentment behind good manners—so when an innocent friendship with a servant is misinterpreted by her father as an illicit union, Evelyn is appalled. Yet the consequence is a welcome one: she is to accompany her father on a trip to North America, where they’ll visit New York City, the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, and conclude with a fishing expedition on the Nipigon River in Canada. Now is her chance to escape her cloistered life, see the world, and reconnect with her father. Once they’re on the Nipigon, however, Evelyn is shocked to discover that their guide is James Douglas, the former stable hand and her one-time friend who disappeared from the estate after the shootings of a poacher and a gamekeeper. Many had assumed that James had been responsible, but Evelyn never could believe it. Now, in the wilds of a new world, far from the constraints of polite society, the truth about that day, James, and her father will be revealed…to stunning consequences.
A look at the wild Irish women throughout history from the ancient warrior queens Morrigan, Macha, and Badbh, to the labor-movement maven Mother Jones. The women in Wild Irish Roses are not always nice girls or even good girls. However, they are women with backbones of steel who know how to get things done, whether on the battlefield or in the bedroom. These are women who preserved and handed down the old stories. They are women who fought in revolutions with either gun or pen, wrote books, starred in books others wrote, and stormed heaven itself. Author Trina Robbins is an impeccable researcher whose knack for telling stories and embellishing them with engaging illustrations and photos, brings each of these Wild Irish Roses to life, including:Maeve and six other warrior queensGrania and Deirdre, who ran away from kings for the love of younger menFive women who turned themselves into birds to get the job done rightSaint Brigit and the saintly Kathleen O’SheaCultural revivalist Maude Gonne and friendsIrish American beauty roses, including Scarlett O’HaraAnd warriors in their own right, such as Mother Jones and company Wild Irish Roses is a celebration of tough, independent, beautiful Irish women from myth to modernity. It’s a book that is sure to entertain, inform, and inspire readers of every background to find the Irish rose in themselves—to discover what they want and have the courage to go out and get it.