MUSE MONDAY
So glad to welcome Michal Scott back to Discover... Her latest novella sounds so intriguing. A mail-order bride with spunk and opposites attract combine for a fun read. Her blurb has me hooked. Tell us where the idea came from, Michal.
Growing up I was a sucker for history. How
people lived in ages past always intrigued me. Born in 1956, I grew up a child
of the 60s Black is Beautiful movement. Nascent pride in being Black -- as we
were calling ourselves then -- intensified my curiosity. I hungered for
anything and everything that could teach me African American history. That’s
why TV shows touching on the hidden stories of African Americans stick with me
to this day.
My most recent novella, Better To Marry Than To
Burn, was inspired by a true story. In his Black Women of the Old West,
William Loren Katz devoted a chapter to African-American married women in
Arizona mining towns advertising back East to bring marriageable women West.
They convinced the unmarried miners to settle down instead of fighting over
prostitutes all the time. What a great set up for an opposites-attract
second-chance romance.
This wasn’t my first encounter with the concept
of mail-order brides, however. I used to watch a show called Here Come The
Brides about three brothers who owned a logging company in Seattle. Bobby
Sherman, a teen idol back then played Jeremy the youngest Bolt brother who
stuttered and David Soul, later of Starsky and Hutch fame, played Joshua the
middle brother. Its premise was the Bolt brothers had loggers who were tired of
having no women in their lives and were ready to quit. The solution was to send
oldest brother Jason, played by Robert Brown, back East to Massachusetts and
return with single women looking for husbands. Many would be available and
willing thanks to the lack of men created by the Civil War. I remembered the
show had done excellent episodes on finding mates for Jewish and Chinese
characters. Somewhere in the dusty recesses of my memory I knew they
had done an episode trying to match African Americans, too. Was the memory real
or had I made it up? Lo and behold, Google showed my memory was still
good.
A Bride for Obie Brown had aired in 1970. I was
pleasantly surprised to rediscover it was Georg Stanford Brown who played Obie
and Cicely Tyson who played Lucenda, both now well-known, even if this old TV
episode is not. Just as episodes on TV sent me searching for more hidden
histories, I hope my novella will do the same for today’s readers, especially
those histories – fact and fiction –
dealing with romance.
Book Blurb:
Freed Man seeking woman to partner in marriage
for at least two years in the black township of Douglass, Texas. Must be
willing and able to help establish a legacy. Marital relations as necessary.
Love neither required nor sought.
Caesar King's ad for a mail-order bride is an
answer to Queen Esther Payne’s prayer. Her family expects her to adhere to
society's traditional conventions of submissive wife and mother, but Queen
refuses. She is not the weaker sex and will not allow herself to be used,
abused or turned into a baby-making machine under the sanctity of matrimony.
Grateful that love is neither required nor sought, she accepts the ex-slave's
offer and heads West for marriage on her terms. Her education and breeding will
see to that. However, once she meets Caesar, his unexpected allure and
intriguing wit makes it hard to keep love at bay. How can she hope to remain her
own woman when victory may be synonymous with surrender?
Excerpt:
She pulled the wagon to a stop. “Care to take over?”
She held the reins before him. He nodded. She handed over the
reins, crossed her arms and stared at him. “Tell me more about Emma.”
He shrugged. That kind of detail hadn’t been part of the
bargain, but...
“Not much to tell. She used to teach us slaves in secret, then
openly when Union forces secured our town. I was her star pupil. We married and
came West for a fresh start. She died giving birth to twin boys soon after we
arrived. They followed her within a few hours.”
A soft light shone at him from her eyes. “Sorry for your loss.”
“None needed. Good comes from bad. Death, not slavery, took my
boys from me. They never had to live as someone’s property.” He sat a little
straighter. “Our children will never have to worry about that.”
“Our children?” She swiveled in her seat. “You made no mention
of wanting children, just marital relations as necessary. I understood that to
mean intercourse.”
“I wrote I wanted to leave a legacy.”
“A legacy. Not a dynasty.”
“Legacy. Dynasty. Is there really so sharp a distinction?”
“To my mind there is. I understood you meant to affect future
generations—endow schools, found churches, create civic associations. I didn’t
realize that meant children. I agreed to having sex, not having children.”
“Of course I want children.” His brows grew heavy as he frowned.
“Doesn’t having sex lead to having children?”
“Not with the right precautions.”
His frown deepened. “Precautions?”
“There are many ways to prevent your seed from taking root, Mr.
King.”
“I want children, Mrs. King.”
Her lips twisted and her brow furrowed, but she kept her
silence.
“All right,” she said. “You can have children with any woman
you like. I won’t stop you. I free you from any claim to fidelity.”
“Legacy—or dynasty if you will—means legitimacy. No bastard will
carry my name, not when I have a wife to bear me children.”
“I see.”
Her tone signaled she didn’t.
Buy links:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/2JyLKu1
