Going Home-- Oregon historical romance

 It is interesting, at least to me, what inspires writers, as to their interests for topics, but also what leads readers to the same things. The diversity possible is huge from settings to subjects and characters. When I thought about writing the third in the Oregon series, its timing was part of its appeal, but there had been so many reasons I found fascinating this time in history. At the same time, it is now complicated to cover it in a simple blog. 

Writing a blurb was easier as it goes more to the characters and their issues, but what about the background of the time where these people had
to find their own happily ever after, if they even could, in a turbulent time with the protagonists having their own complexities due to their choices.

Because, in many ways, we live in such a time in 2025, not just in the US but around the world. Writing a book can infuriate as many readers as please them. Study histories of periods a hundred years ago and watch out which books you trust, as histories can be distorted to suit agendas. When writing a book set in such times, it has to be presented as the truth-- but was it?

I began Going Home with needing an interesting hero for the middle Stevens sister. Loraine, who preferred to be called Raine. She had left the family homestead when they got to Oregon. She preferred a life in town and saw the work that interested her as business. She thrived in that environment and even got into stage productions. She felt successful and not in need of a man in her life.

Well, there was one man, Jedediah Hardman, who she called the Laird because of his arrogance and background, with family having left Scotland
due to abuse from the more powerful English. In Georgia they had established a plantation, but not of slaves because of their own heritage of abuse. Their workers were free and paid. Jed had come to Oregon and acquired an Eastern Oregon ranch. He found he woman he wanted to be at his side, but Raine was a city woman and ranch life can be hard and isolating. 

Before they could work out anything, the Civil War erupted. Jed's brothers signed up with the Confederacy, not to defend slavery but to fight for their land. Jed couldn't fight against his own kin; so he traveled back to Georgia and to fight for the South, not a popular view in Abolitionist Oregon (despite its own dark history of racism where in its constitution declared no Black could own land or live in the state and weirdly no Pacific Islander could marry a white). Hypocrisy so often is connected to righteousness.

Going Home begins when the war has ended. Raine is feeling fairly settled into her life, but then Jed returns to Oregon to reclaim, What Is His. 

The complication for me, as a writer of this book, was when this whole issue of North versus South was erupting again, when the book was due to come out, over statues, names of teams, and even forts. Having a hero fighting for the South was not going to be popular, but the plot couldn't change and this demonstrates another kerfuffle for writers when political viewpoints change with right and wrong being strongly disagreed over.

Going Home though stayed as it was written with all the interesting aspects of various cultural differences even within a country. It did not just deal with the black and white issues (important as that was). but also the Chinese and Native American issues. Along with that is life at the edge of wilderness, which eventually the hero and heroine must navigate through if they want a good life together. 

This third book in the Oregon series is wide; but if you want to read a sample, the blurb, or purchase it, it is here on Amazon-- Going Home