MUSE MONDAY
What a fun guest post we have today. Please welcome Patricia McAlexander to Discover... on Muse Monday.
While writing fiction, one has, I think, sudden bursts of insight
and inspiration. They might be called Eureka moments. When I was writing my
historical fiction Second Wives, many
such moments came as I researched the
past.
Second Wives is based on three generations of my German Kornmeyer
ancestors. I knew that the first two generations—a father and his seven children—came
from Baden to New York in 1850 as steerage passengers on a ship named the Jane
E Williams. I experienced one of my first Eureka moments when I simply googled
the Jane E Williams—and up on the screen came a painting of a sailing
ship with its US flag stiff in the wind. It was labeled "The Barque Jane
E. Williams of New York, 1848, oil on canvas 18 x 25.5 inches” and signed by
artist Lorenz Petersen (1803-1870). The
actual painting had been sold, but its image made my ancestors’ voyage across
the Atlantic suddenly vivid and real for me.
Another Eureka moment came when I found on Ancestry.com the
manifest listing the passengers on the Jane E Williams, which arrived in
New York Harbor from Rotterdam on October 7, 1850. The names of my
great-great-grandfather Martin Kornmeyer (age 38, male, Baden, farmer) and his
seven children, written in the archaic cursive of the recording official, was another
lightning bolt from the past. It made me see
the family standing on the deck of the docked ship as the official checked
off their names.
He took a small box from his pocket
and handed it to her. Emma lifted the lid. There was a double-stoned topaz
ring, the amber stones set in gold, winking in the sunlight.
“Will you take this as an engagement
ring?”
“Oh, it’s beautiful.” Emma took the
ring out of the box and slipped it onto her finger. “It fits perfectly. And the
two stones side by side—they are you and me.”
This
husband died long before she did. One of the ring’s stones was now missing, a
dark hole bordered by the loosened prongs that had held it. As I looked down at
the ring, now with just one stone, I felt the pain Emma must have felt when she
lost him. Another Eureka moment.
Amid the political chaos of the German Confederation in 1848 and
with crops on his Baden farm failing, thirty-six-year-old Martin Kornmeyer
persuades his wife, Esther, to emigrate to America with their seven children
and her widowed younger sister, Rosa. When Esther falls ill on the
journey, the family is delayed in the Netherlands for two years—a time
marked by guilt, new love, and death while they strive to follow the dictates
of their Catholic faith. At last, the family crosses the Atlantic and
settles in the farming regions of western New York State. As decades pass
there, first Martin’s oldest son, Karl, and then Karl’s daughter Emma also face
love and loss and look to that earlier generation for guidance.
Inspired by the author’s ancestors, this historical saga traces
the lives of three generations through marriage, loss, and the possibility of
renewal through a second love.
Excerpt
Martin
reached down, scooped up a handful of soil, and, opening his fist, showed it to
her. “I’ve loved this land, worked this soil, all my life. It will always be a
part of me. But the crops have failed too many times. The farm is mortgaged. We
would lose it if we stayed longer. And you know the political situation here.”
He let the soil sift through his fingers back to the ground. “I will find new land in America. It will be
a better home there for Esther and our children and their children.”
Rosa
recognized in his eyes, his voice, the kind of passion she’d seen in Johannes
when he talked of politics, of revolution. She turned away to look out past the
farmhouse and barn to the winter-barren land beyond. She
thought of the ragged men in the cities, of their angry demonstrations, of what
Johannes had said about America. She turned back. “Yes, I see why you have to
go.” Pulling her hood back over her head, she began moving out into the wind.
“And it’s time for me to go back to Stuttgart. I’ll find work there as a
governess.”
“Rosa!” He reached out and took her arm.
“Esther and I want you to come with us.”
buy link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GTWT772K
Email: mcalexanderpatricia@gmail.com
Website: https://patriciamcalexander.weebly.com
Originally from upstate New York, Patricia
McAlexander earned degrees from the State University of New York at Albany,
Columbia University, and The University of Wisconsin, Madison, all in English.
It was in Madison that she met her Southerner husband, Hubert, a fellow
graduate student. They made Athens, Georgia their home, raised their son there,
and taught at the University of Georgia. After retiring, Patricia has had more
time to garden and travel while renewing her interests in photography, history,
and, most of all, writing fiction.. Since 2020 she has published four
contemporary novels of romantic suspense—Stranger in the Storm, Shadows
of Doubt, The Student in Classroom Six, and The Last Golden
Isle. In Second Wives she combines the romance and psychological
complexity of her previous works with family lore and genealogical research to
create her first novel of historical fiction.
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