The post “The Whip” wins the 2013 National Indie Excellence Award for Best Western appeared first on Karen Kondazian.

For Immediate Release
November 2012

USA BOOK NEWS ANNOUNCES
WINNERS AND FINALISTS OF
THE 2012 USA BEST BOOK AWARDS

Mainstream & Independent Titles Score Top Honors in the 
9th Annual USA Best Book Awards

St. Martin’s Press, Harper Collins, Crown, John Wiley & Sons, Hyperion, McGraw-Hill, Sterling, Llewellyn Worldwide, Tyndale House, Thomas Nelson, Sounds True, Chicago Review Press, NASA, American Cancer Society, and hundreds of Independent Houses contribute to this year’s Outstanding Competition!

LOS ANGELES – USABookNews.com, the premier online magazine and review website for mainstream and independent publishing houses, announced the winners and finalists of THE 2012 USA BEST BOOK AWARDS on November 16, 2012. Over 400 winners and finalists were announced in over 100 categories covering print, e-books and audio books. Awards were presented for titles published in 2011 and 2012.

Jeffrey Keen, President and CEO of USA Book News, said this year’s contest yielded over 1500 entries from mainstream and independent publishers, which were then narrowed down to over 400 winners and finalists.

Award highlights include the following (Full results listing available on USABooknews.com):

Keen says of the awards, now in their tenth year, “The 2012 results represent a phenomenal mix of books from a wide array of publishers throughout the United States. With a full publicity and marketing campaign promoting the results of the USA Best Book Awards, this year’s winners and finalists will gain additional media coverage for the upcoming holiday retail season.”

Winners and finalists traversed the publishing landscape: St. Martin’s Press, Harper Collins, Crown, John Wiley & Sons, Hyperion, McGraw-Hill, Sterling, Llewellyn Worldwide, Tyndale House, Thomas Nelson, Sounds True, Chicago Review Press, NASA, American Cancer Society and hundreds of independent houses contributed to this year’s outstanding competition. Keen adds, “Our success begins with the enthusiastic participation of authors and publishers and continues with our distinguished panel of industry judges who bring to the table their extensive editorial, PR, marketing, and design expertise.”

USABookNews.com is an online publication providing coverage for books from mainstream and independent publishers to the world online community.

A complete list of the winners and finalists of The 2012 USA Best Book Awards are available online at http://www.USABookNews.com.

The post The Whip wins USA Book News Best Historical Fiction Award appeared first on Karen Kondazian.

Cuzco was founded in the 15th century by the Incas, and then later vanquished by the Spaniards. I stayed in an ancient Monastery (1595) the Hotel Monasterio del Cuzco, and at breakfast I heard chanting… beautiful, peaceful chanting – and drank coca tea. Blissful is how I started my day.

After breakfast, I boarded the Vistadome train for the ride to Machu Picchu. We saw from our windows lush jungle vegetation. The train tracks followed the winding Sacred River. We watched serious looking climbers who were trekking the very extreme, 4-day hike up the giant mountain to Machu Picchu. They did not glance our way, probably thinking how foolish we were ensconced in our leather seats. Once we reached the little village below the mountain, we boarded a bus that took us up a road so narrow, so bumpy, so utterly rutted… a trail, it seemed, for llama’s, not buses. Whenever another bus came in the opposite direction, since they were closest to the mountain and we were dangling over a cliff that seemed to soar to an endless bottom, the other bus would lay sideways against the mountain to let us pass. The lady next to me quietly crossed herself. After a half an hour of climbing, we reached the rustic and evergreen Sanctuary Lodge, which is right on the property of Machu Picchu. My garden door opened out onto a lawn and there looming before me was the great mountain.

The Incas built Machu Picchu in the 1400′s. It was the last bastion of the Inca Empire. It was unknown to the gold hungry Spanish conquerors and finally swallowed whole by the dense jungles– until 1911, when American explorer Hiram Bingham re-discovered it. Part of its fascination is due to the lack of precise information about the city’s origin and why the Incas built, occupied and then abandoned it. We do know that they worshiped Nature– the mountain, the sky and their sacred river far below.

I walked a short distance from the Sanctuary to the gate, showed my ticket and passport and entered. I walked through a stone-like structure and then, like the great Petra in Jordan, walked into the wide-open light and literally gasped out loud. How does one describe perfection? You don’t… so I won’t try. But I will say that Machu Picchu is located high, high, very high up on a mountain in Peru’s most desolate jungles… with only the faint sound of the Sacred River far below, rushing its way toward the Amazon.  There was climbing about on broken ancient stone stairs with nothing to hold on to except the hand of God. There were plunging terraces, clouds so near, you try to reach out and touch, an energy force that puts you Here – Now – In your body – Out of your body – A part of nature and time, with a kind of brilliant and mystical light… like walking a tightrope with no net, in the blazing sun… shaking yourself in the dream you must be dreaming. And if you are lucky as I was to be one of a few to sit on a little sheltered wooden bench– and look out at this abandoned city, its ruins, caught in mid-breath in the middle of a cloud forest… stretched out like visions from another life, another time, another body. And the Mountain – that mountain… a force, a power that seemed almost alive, as though that giant rock might have roots and be growing itself from the earth.

I kept staring at that mountain… wondering why it moved me so, brought me to tears. Why it made me feel so peaceful and yet so in awe, almost fearful. And then I realized, it was of course, the face of God– looking out of that ancient massive rock.  And I understood that that must be why the Incas must have built their city here… They felt it too.

After a day and a morning with the city, like a lover leaving her warm bed, I found myself disorientated and lost… I was back on the famous bus ride, only this time we were the ones to lay ourselves flat against the mountain. The train ride back was on the beautiful Hiram Bingham Orient Express… There were candles, good silverware… the seat was in the dining car and the ride home consisted of a five-course meal with Peru’s famous Pisco Sour drink. A liquor so tangy and sweet that I fairly swooned.

Then in quick order, from Cuzco to Lima.  From Lima to Los Angeles. The city of Angels.

For days after Manchu Picchu, in my own bed, I had strange dreams that I could not remember. Except for the wings… over that Mountain, with great wings.

The post Notes From Machu Picchu – by Karen Kondazian appeared first on Karen Kondazian.

The moment that I truly realized I was on my journey, I watched Los Angeles disappear through the small airplane window and heard first in Spanish, the emergency instructions, then in English. The next hours on LAN (Lima Airlines) were a Fellini blur of trays of airplane food and wine, tangled airplane blankets and pillows– waiting in strange airports feeling lost, not sure if I was in the right place, the right terminal, the right gate, as no one seemed to speak English…  clocks that seemed to go forward, backward—Finally, seventeen hours, one refueling and 2 planes later, I peered out a now familiar little window, and watched mysterious dark fingers of clouds bleed into the psychedelic orange sunrise. We were heading over a small piece of land that, seemingly, was floating at the very end of the earth. At long last, we were landing… on the most isolated inhabited island in the entire world… the mysterious, mystical Easter Island!

I staggered out of the plane, suffocating in the heat and humidity… December, summer in this part of the world. Placed between the airplane itself and the little terminal, a hand painted sign pointed out that we had arrived in Easter Island…a colorful flowered lei was placed around my neck…faces and arms helped me and my luggage into a van. Bouncing along the primitive rutted roads to the hotel… Explora, it was called… a rustic, low lying wooden structure, part of the land… with wide open shutters flung open to the navy sea and fields of grazing horses and cattle. I collapsed on my bed staring up at the wooden timbered ceiling…. nausea, headache, muscles tight and painful from the trip and no sleep… the air breezing through the windows, so clean that my lungs began to cough, expelling toxins of the world I had just come from. I slept with shoes on and awoke to the sunlight… it was 9:00 pm… it felt like a dream… Light and night. I discovered in the glass covered restaurant that the sun does not go down until after 10 pm. My dinner and wine tasted of the earth. The next few days I tramped, climbed, panted… The great, many ton, (some 82 tons) looming volcanic rock Moai heads of Easter Island, (Rapa Nui, Chile 1250-1500)… 887 of them scattered all over the hills, on the beaches, facing their generations of children… protecting them, the beautiful people of the island, with their golden flesh bodies carved from Michelangelo’s chisel.

The forever vivid towering image of the magical Moai… on rough, ancient platforms, 15 of them… giant and godlike, lined up one next to the other, backlit from the setting sun.

I held my breath and felt myself moved backward step after step…faster and faster in the field… their immense power pushing me back in worship and obedience. I finally stopped and faced them all… their unspeakable energy. I remember not breathing for a very long moment… My body prickled. It was as though I was waiting for them to speak. I waited a long while. It was getting dark. And then finally the staring stone eyes told me one word… eternal…  that we are ‘always’… just as they are… and always will be.

The post Notes From Easter Island by Karen Kondazian appeared first on Karen Kondazian.

For Immediate Release
November 2012

USA BOOK NEWS ANNOUNCES
WINNERS AND FINALISTS OF
THE 2012 USA BEST BOOK AWARDS

Mainstream & Independent Titles Score Top Honors in the
9th Annual USA Best Book Awards

St. Martin’s Press, Harper Collins, Crown, John Wiley & Sons, Hyperion, McGraw-Hill, Sterling, Llewellyn Worldwide, Tyndale House, Thomas Nelson, Sounds True, Chicago Review Press, NASA, American Cancer Society, and hundreds of Independent Houses contribute to this year’s Outstanding Competition!

LOS ANGELES – USABookNews.com, the premier online magazine and review website for mainstream and independent publishing houses, announced the winners and finalists of THE 2012 USA BEST BOOK AWARDS on November 16, 2012. Over 400 winners and finalists were announced in over 100 categories covering print, e-books and audio books. Awards were presented for titles published in 2011 and 2012.

Jeffrey Keen, President and CEO of USA Book News, said this year’s contest yielded over 1500 entries from mainstream and independent publishers, which were then narrowed down to over 400 winners and finalists.

Award highlights include the following (Full results listing available on USABooknews.com):

Keen says of the awards, now in their tenth year, “The 2012 results represent a phenomenal mix of books from a wide array of publishers throughout the United States. With a full publicity and marketing campaign promoting the results of the USA Best Book Awards, this year’s winners and finalists will gain additional media coverage for the upcoming holiday retail season.”

Winners and finalists traversed the publishing landscape: St. Martin’s Press, Harper Collins, Crown, John Wiley & Sons, Hyperion, McGraw-Hill, Sterling, Llewellyn Worldwide, Tyndale House, Thomas Nelson, Sounds True, Chicago Review Press, NASA, American Cancer Society and hundreds of independent houses contributed to this year’s outstanding competition. Keen adds, “Our success begins with the enthusiastic participation of authors and publishers and continues with our distinguished panel of industry judges who bring to the table their extensive editorial, PR, marketing, and design expertise.”

USABookNews.com is an online publication providing coverage for books from mainstream and independent publishers to the world online community.

A complete list of the winners and finalists of The 2012 USA Best Book Awards are available online at http://www.USABookNews.com.

The post The Whip wins USA Book News Best Historical Fiction Award appeared first on Karen Kondazian.

The suffragette movement protesting against Woodrow Wilson in front of The White House, 1917

As the time for our right to vote as Americans approaches, we thought we’d share the stories of some extraordinary and courageous women in U.S. history… who exercised their right as citizens of this country, defied authority in order to make their voices heard — and defended the 1^st Amendment of our Constitution regardless of the consequences.

Women were not given the right to vote until 1920. But in 1917, 33 women were jailed for protesting in front of the White House. They were beaten, abused, and  tortured because of their decision to defy the government and stand for their beliefs that women were equal to men and had the same right to place a mark on the ballot! Their resilience and bravery during their time in prison gives testament to women’s ability to overcome any and all obstacles that stand in their way.

The infamous “Night of Terror” on November 15, 1917, claimed many victims from the suffragette movement to the unspeakable horrors at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia.

Below are some of the true heroines, who give U.S. women today the gift of political equality — and more than enough reasons to go out and exercise their right to vote tomorrow, November 6th, 2012.

Lucy Burns was beaten and chained to her cell bars in prison. She was left hanging overnight, bleeding and gasping for air.

Alice Paul, a leader of the Suffragette movement, was tortured for weeks after organizing a hunger strike. Woodrow Wilson himself attempted to discredit Paul by persuading a psychiatrist to diagnose her as clinically insane.

Dora Lewis was thrown into a dark cell, and knocked out cold by prison guards who banged her head against an iron bed.

Mrs. Pauline Adams was imprisoned for 60 days, accused as one of the 33 women who were “obstructing sidewalk traffic” in front of Wilson’s White House.

Helena Hill Weed, from Norwalk CN, served 3 days in a DC prison for carrying a banner that said “Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Berthe Arnold, CSU Graduate and kindergarten teacher, was arrested January 1919 during the Watchfire demonstrations. She was sentenced to 5 days in District Jail.

Edith Ainge, from Jamestown NY, was the first delegate to the convention of the National Woman’s Party to arrive at their Washington headquarters. She served 60 days in Occoquan Workhouse on Sept. 1917, as well as 4 other jail sentences for advocating women’s rights.

The post ‘Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.’ appeared first on Karen Kondazian.

Portrait of Lillian Smith

Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show was a staple of Old West entertainment during the 1800s and featured many of the era’s famous sharpshooters and pioneers, such as Annie Oakley, James “Wild Bill” Hickok, and Calamity Jane herself. However, the youngest ever to join Buffalo Bill’s troupe of performers was a brassy California teen by the name of Lillian Smith… who would then become Annie Oakley’s strongest female rival.

Born Lillian Frances Smith in Colville California, she was the quintessential tomboy at age 7 (when, growing bored with playing with dolls, she asked her father for a rifle to play with instead). By age 10, she was nearly unbeatable and her father bet $5000.00 to anyone that could surpass little Lillian’s shooting. Buffalo Bill was touring in California at this time, and discovered the girl prodigy, inviting her along to be a part of his troupe at the mere age of 15 and naming her “The Champion California Huntress.”

A young Lillian with a Stevens Tip-Up Rifle

This new addition to the troupe didn’t sit well with one of its veterans, though. Annie Oakley was an excellent sharpshooter, besting many male professionals, and had already established herself as a star in Buffalo Bill’s show. Though Oakley preferred to perform with a shotgun, while Lillian excelled with a rifle, tensions rose when the young Smith was invited into Buffalo Bill’s fold. Lillian’s constant bragging about her prowess didn’t help, especially when she was heard by many saying that “Annie Oakley was done for” now that Lillian had arrived. Much younger than Oakley, and feeling on top of the world, Lillian was known, during the show tours, for her shameless flirting… and dressed in much more flashy attire than Oakley dared to. Perhaps feeling threatened by the 15-year-old, Oakley began telling people she was six years younger than she really was — and had a brand new outfit made for the Wild West Show’s opening parade in order to attract much wanted attention her way.

Things didn’t get better between the two starlets. When Cody’s show headed to London in 1887, their competitive personalities and the publicity surrounding the London tour made tensions rise– and after an embarrassing rifle shot by Lillian, Oakley stepped forward and delivered such an impressive performance, that Prince Edward congratulated her personally. This small triumph wasn’t enough to remedy Oakley’s resentment towards Lillian — Ultimately, Oakley decided to leave Cody’s show at the end of the London season.

Lillian Smith featured in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show

Lillian now had her chance to gloat at having driven Oakley away — and Cody enabled the pretense that Lillian was a loyal performer, by snubbing Oakley and praising Lillian, when he recounted her triumphs at his meeting with Queen Victoria in London. However, Lillian’s performance in Cody’s show didn’t seem to have as much draw as before, and he came to the realization that she would never be as highly regarded as Oakley. Lillian must have realized her glory days were over as well; she left Buffalo Bill’s troupe right before Oakley rejoined in 1889.

A performer nonetheless, Lillian didn’t give up the public eye. Still beating many male rifle shooters, she challenged Oakley to a match many times — but the invitations were declined. Nonplussed, Lillian turned up in Mexican Joe’s Wild West show, her skin darkened — and performed under a new name: “Princess Wenona, the Indian Girl Shot”. She did meet up with Oakley one more time, at the 1902 Grand American Handicap competition, where Oakley once again bested the young rifle-woman.

Lillian Smith might not have been the icon Annie Oakley was — but as the youngest performer in Cody’s Wild West show, she certainly established herself as the best rifle shot in California and was heralded as a force to be reckoned with in the Western plains.

Lillian Smith as “Princess Wenona, the Indian Girl Shot”

The post Lillian Smith: The Champion California Huntress appeared first on Karen Kondazian.

1. Martha Jane Canary (or Cannary) was born to Robert and Charlotte Cannary, the oldest of six siblings, in Princeton, Missouri. Her mother died of pneumonia during a wagon-train move to Virginia City, Montana — and her father died soon after moving the family to Salt Lake City, Utah. Martha Jane, now in charge of her brothers and sisters, packed up the children on the Union Pacific Railroad and settled in Piedmont, Wyoming.

2. Martha Jane was not an educated girl. She was illiterate and her knowledge was mostly based on survival skills. During her time traveling with the caravan from Missouri to Montana, she was often in the company of the party hunters, from whom she learned how to ride horses, shoot, and hunt for herself.

3. She was described as an “extremely attractive,” “pretty, dark-eyed girl,” in her youth– but once she donned the nickname Calamity Jane, by 1876, her good looks had withered; her skin turned leathery and tanned from the sun, and she had a muscular and unfeminine look about her.

4. Tasked with raising her 5 siblings, she took any job she could obtain in order to support her family. Accounts from those times tell us that she worked as a waitress, cook and dishwasher, as well as a dance-hall girl, a nurse, and even as an ox-team driver in Piedmont. Eventually she got work as a scout at Fort Russell in Cheyenne, and simultaneously worked as a part-time prostitute in Ft. Laramie’s Three Mile Hog Ranch.

“I figure if a girl wants to be a legend she should go ahead and be one.” — Calamity Jane

5. The first documented use of her nickname, Calamity Jane, was published in the Deadwood newspaper: The Black Hills Pioneer in July 15, 1876, boasting the headline — “Calamity Jane has arrived!”– just as the Hickok wagon train appeared in town. She first met Wild Bill Hickok that same year before coming to Deadwood — contrary to her claims that she had married him and had his child while she was stationed in Fort Russell. It is said that her rumored love affair with Wild Bill Hickok was greatly exaggerated, and spawned mostly from a great obsession and admiration on her part.

6. The wild plains were definitely harsh, and as many others, Calamity Jane had a drinking problem that couldn’t be quenched. In June 10, 1876, she set out for a buggy joy ride from Cheyenne to Fort Russell, but was so drunk that she missed her destination, ending up in Fort Laramie instead.

7. Wild stories aside, Calamity Jane made her mark in 1875, when her company was sent to the Bog Horn River under General Crook. She swam the Platte River and traveled 90 miles at top speed to deliver important dispatches. After Wild Bill Hickok’s death, she continued to live in Deadwood. She once saved passengers from an overland stagecoach — escaping some Plains Indians who were in pursuit. The stagecoach driver was killed, so Calamity Jane took over the reins and drove the coach safely to its destination. In 1876, she played the hero again during a smallpox epidemic in the Deadwood area, being the first in line to nurse the victims back to health without concern for her own well-being. She never refused help to anyone who needed it and is remembered as a highly generous and selfless woman, as she would often put the safety of others before her own.

8. Calamity Jane’s final years are just as interesting as her earlier times. She bought a ranch near the Yellowstone River, where she managed an inn for a time. She was featured as a storyteller in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show in 1893, and participated in the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. Another female legend, Annie Oakley, also took part in Buffalo Bill’s Show — however she had a more active role to play as a sharpshooter; roping, and riding for the audience. Calamity Jane appeared on stage dressed in buckskins — reciting her adventures — which metastasized every time she told them. Originally it was all good clean fun, but after six months her drinking took over, and her increasing profanity ended her storytelling career.

9. From what history tells us, Calamity Jane seems to have died from alcohol poisoning, or from an illness contracted from imbibing too much alcohol — she was traveling by train and drinking heavily on board when she became ill. The train conductor transferred her to the Calloway Hotel nearby where she died, August 1, 1903. She was in her mid-50s.

10. Allegedly, Calamity Jane’s dying wish was to be buried next to Wild Bill, which might have led to the speculations about her supposed romance with him. Four men who had taken part in planning her funeral have stated — that Wild Bill Hickok had “absolutely no use” for Calamity Jane when she had been alive, so they decided to bury her next to his grave in Mount Moriah Cemetery in South Dakota, as a posthumous joke on the old frontiersman.

Robin Weigert as Calamity Jane in HBO’s Deadwood

There have been many film and television interpretations of Calamity Jane throughout the years — the most recent being Robin Weigert’s Emmy nominated portrayal of the legendary frontiers-woman in HBO’s Original Series Deadwood. Robin Weigert  just completed recording the audiobook version of Karen Kondazian’s critically acclaimed historical novel The Whip, to be released in  November 2012, and available through Audible.com/TheWhip, Amazon and iTunes.

The post Women in History: Calamity Jane appeared first on Karen Kondazian.

When the Going Gets Tough

by

Katherine Hauswirth

 

Besides meeting kindred spirits, one of the nicest things about this column is the access to books of all kinds from publishers and publicists. These perks include genres that don’t usually draw me, and I surprised myself when I signed on to read the novel The Whip. Normally reading “a piece of the “Old West” in a cover blurb would have me passing on the book. But this one had a hook.

 Charley Parkhurst, when she was alive, was known far and wide as a brave and highly skilled stagecoach driver. Women didn’t drive stagecoaches, you say? Well, she lived most of her life as a man; it was only after her death that Charley’s gender was discovered, to the incredulous surprise of the “tough guys” who (thought they) knew “him.”

 Author Karen Kondazian found a gem when she found Charley’s story, and she’s done a good job polishing and embellishing it. There isn’t a lot of verifiable information about Charley’s life, and Kondazian discloses up front that she’s made up some historical details. It is a novel, after all. But the draw of the story, for me, was that it was based on someone who must have had one heck of an adventure, whether or not the novel gets the particulars exactly right.

 Kondazian’s got an acting background and it shows. Her highly visual scenes shift rapidly and dramatically. The book opens on One-Eyed Charley driving his coach hard and fast, a “craggy yellow toothed god”. The drama shifts to a visit with the doctor, who doesn’t have a promising prognosis for Charley, and later to his home with Anna, where he’s come to die. Only when Charley’s finally unraveled his clothes to reveal the nearly forgotten Charlotte beneath do we begin to hear the story of how a pretty young girl evolved to a grizzled, gun-toting man.

 The story’s complicated, as I’m guessing the story of the real Charley was. But while there’s the constant knowledge that Charley’s life has a major element of artifice, the author shows us emotions that are real—intense love with an unlikely partner; heart-wrenching, unfathomable loss; and the decision to begin again and keep going. Estrogen or not, Charley is as gritty and tough and admirable for her resolve as any squinting, tobacco-chewing cowboy in any Western you’ve ever read or watched. The book ends with real newspaper clippings from 1880, and the obituary claims her life story as “sufficient of the wonderful.” I’ve got to agree, at least when it comes to the fictionalized Charley of The Whip.

 

One Western-themed read begat another. I only knew a few of the big names, and Louis L’Amour seemed a good place to start, with more than ninety books to his credit. End of the Drive is a collection of his stories that were discovered by L’Amour’s daughter after he died.

Here I found myself again, an Easterner who is not especially fond of frontier reads (unless you count Little House on the Prairie), reading about the Old West. The Whip showed a woman’s perspective, made even more interesting because her gender is a secret. L’Amour’s voice is very masculine, but the thing that kept me reading was that it wasn’t just cowpokes, cattle drives, and saloons. L’Amour’s shrewd eye for human nature is what makes his stories both colorful and familiar. In this edition, we have a preacher that preys on the gullible and people whose true colors are brought out by money, as well as quiet, good men who retain their decency and fortitude in the midst of chaotic times.

 L’Amour’s language is direct, compelling, and pithy—here’s the end of the story after which the book is titled:

“ ‘I like the way you straddle a town, and I like a man with judgment and principle. It is a rare thing to find a man who will stand square on what he believes, whether it is making a rule or an exception to it. So if you’ll ride with me it’s a partnership, share and share alike.’

A square, solid, blocky man in a striped white shirt and black sleeve garters, he looked at me carefully from those cool gray eyes and then he said, quite seriously, ‘I’ve little to pack”, he said, “for a man who has never had anything but a gun travels light.’ ”

The first paragraph has a softer side. But the one that follows is Clint Eastwood flick familiar; it gets down to the business of survival, which was the heart of the matter on the frontier.

It finally clicked for me when I read these Western-centric books that this business of survival is the draw of the story, and those authors who make it appealing do so with a mix of grit and humanity—we see the toughness that had to be cultivated, but we also see the tender human heart under the unflinching mask of invincibility. The frontier was a hard place, the struggle to tackle and tame it is part of our collective American heritage. Both L’Amour and Kondazian show us people in the dusty whirlwind of change and how they travel through it, headlong into the dust with hope for something better on the other side.

 

Books mentioned in this column:
The Whip, by Karen Kondazian (Hansen Publishing Group, 2012)
The End of the Drive, by Louis L’Amour (Bantam, 1997)
Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder (HarperCollins, 1994) 
Katherine Hauswirth is a medical writer by day and a creative writer by stolen moments. She writes creative nonfiction and poetry. She is the author of the book Harriet’s Voice: A Writing Mother’s Journey and contributed to the anthology Get Satisfied: How Twenty People Like You Found the Satisfaction of Enough. Katherine has been published in many venues including The Writer, Byline, The Christian Science Monitor, Pregnancy, The Writer’s Handbook, The Writer’s Guide to Fiction, Chronogram, Women of Spirit, Wilderness House Literary Review, Poetry Kit, Eat a Peach, Lutheran Digest, and Pilgrimage. A Long Island native, Katherine lives with her husband and son in Deep River, Connecticut.

Harriet’s Voice: Home Base for Writing Mothers is her personal website.

The post Karen Kondazian and Louis L’Amour: A Review appeared first on Karen Kondazian.

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