I love writing about Christmas -- I’ve written two Christmas mysteries, one in each series, plus a short holiday mystery. More about them in my last two posts, including this Christmas Cookie Roundup and this recipe for yummy Medjool Date Turtles.
So with 16 published cozy mysteries, all safely tucked in the food-loving world, what prompted me to take a totally different path with my latest book, All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection? |
| The collage I made while writing "A Bitter Wind," the novella that anchors the collection. |
The same thing, really. Passion. My family came to Montana in waves, from 1915 to 1952. I was born and raised here, and though I left for a while – I went to college in Seattle and spent my young adult years there – I am deeply passionate about the place and its history.
I don’t remember how I first learned about Mary Fields, but I do know that like so many, I was instantly fascinated. Mary was born into slavery in Tennessee in about 1832 – she never knew the year or day, but chose to celebrate it on March 15. In her later years, she threw a party for herself and invited the children of the town of Cascade. Montana, where she lived from 1895 until her death in 1914.
In 1870, Mary worked as a cabin attendant on the steamship Robert E. Lee, which plied the Mississippi River. From there, she went to work in the household of Judge Edmund Dunne of Akron, Ohio. That’s where she met his youngest sister, Sarah Theresa, an Ursuline nun better known as Sister Amadeus, later Mother Amadeus – the Mother Superior of the order, who were primarily teachers.
In 1884, Amadeus and a group of nuns came to Montana Territory at the request of the Jesuits to start schools for girls at their missions, both white and Indian girls. In early 1885, while starting up the schools at St. Peter’s Mission west of the small town of Cascade in central Montana, Amadeus became deathly ill with pneumonia. Mary and three nuns came west, by train, steamboat, and stage, to nurse her. They succeeded.
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| St. Peter's Mission, taken before 1908 |
And Mary stayed.
In those early years, Mary fished, hunted, grew a garden, raised chickens, and hauled people and freight by wagon. She did, one of the nuns wrote, “everything we couldn’t do ourselves.” She was an integral part of their community, and of mission life.
All was not easy, though. Life on the untamed prairie was hard. Prejudice came west with the settlers. Mary was “overbearing and troublesome,” to quote an entry in the nuns' annals. There were clashes. Contrary to the myth, no shots were fired. But in 1894, the bishop ordered Amadeus to dismiss Mary from the Mission, and decreed that the Ursulines have no more contact with her.
Mary moved into Cascade, ten miles away, and opened a restaurant. When it failed – cooking was one thing; running a business another – that crafty Amadeus arranged for her to get the mail route between Cascade and the mission, making her the first African-American woman in the country to do so and leading to her nickname, “Stagecoach Mary.” Mary delivered the mail until 1904, when she retired, taking in laundry and babysitting local children -- including the future actor, Gary Cooper, who grew up in Cascade.
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| Mary Fields, ca. 1897 (studio portrait) |
I think Mary is appealing because she brings together three aspects of the history of the American West that are inherently intriguing: the Black experience during westward expansion after the Civil War, the missionary era, and the woman on her own. Too, she’s been the subject of much myth-making, even caricature, that I wanted to explore and counter. I took the stories of her big heart and amplified them, using my research and my own heart.
And it turns out that many of the same themes echo through my stories, no matter which shelf you find them on in the bookstore: women’s lives and choices, especially in times when society imposed great restraints; women’s friendships; the search for justice and the nature of forgiveness; how our physical surroundings, the landscape, influences us.
The result: three short stories and a novella, each with a mystery slant, telling stories of the forgotten past. Remembering matters. And I know each of you knows the power of story to open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts.
I hope you’ll take the trek back in time, with Mary and me.
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Take a step back in time with All God's Sparrows and Other Stories: A Stagecoach Mary Fields Collection of historical short mysteries, featuring the Agatha-Award winning "All God's Sparrows" and other stories imagining the life of real-life historical figure Mary Fields, born into slavery in 1832, during the last thirty years of her life, in Montana. Out September 17, 2024 from Beyond the Page Publishing.
“Finely researched and richly detailed, All God’s Sparrows and Other Stories is a wonderful collection. I loved learning about this fascinating woman . . . and what a character she is! Kudos to Leslie Budewitz for bringing her to life so vividly.” —Kathleen Grissom, New York Times bestselling author of Crow Mary
Available at Amazon * Barnes & Noble * Books-A-Million * Bookshop.org * and your local booksellers!
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TO ERR IS CUMIN:A Spice Shop Mystery (Seventh St. Books, out now in paper, ebook, and audio)
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