River

The story will continue in the next book, Journey.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE:

This story took a lot of turns that I wasn’t expecting. I actually intended this book to include the journey of the New Orleans down the Mississippi River, but the characters all just demanded that I tell their stories first, so I let them have their way.

There are some bits from history in this book. For instance, Marguerite Ellis really did die in 1811, but I couldn’t find the details about how or when. So I decided to let her have the chance to see her daughter Margaret married, and have one last visit with her.

There really was a huge comet in the skies that year, which everyone was looking at and talking about. It was especially prominent in the Fall as the steamboat was getting ready to take its trip downriver.

Mason really was shot escaping from the authorities, then beheaded by his gang. Little Harpe and James May really did show up with his head trying to claim the reward, and were recognized and arrested. Apparently it was never known whether it had been Mason’s gunshot wound that did him in, or if he was murdered by his gang. That happened a few years earlier, in 1804, but I decided to make Gregor and friends have to deal with that so I shifted the bandits’ timeline by a few years.

Thomas Butler really did move to Louisiana in 1811.

Samuel Duncan never married, so I decided to give him Ben.

There are so many details available on the truth machine (you know, the internet) of the names and lives of people who lived in the past, and it has been thrilling to take their most basic details and then weave my fantastical tale all around them.

Thanks for reading.