Four Little Known Facts about Wallin Landing

As I prepare to say goodbye to Wallin Landing, the setting for my Frontier Bachelors series, I thought you might like to know a few secrets as about the town. Here then are little known facts about the setting:

1. It wasn’t originally intended to be. When I first started the Frontier Bachelors series, I had envisioned telling the stories of several of the Mercer Belles, those ladies from the East Coast who traveled west with Asa Mercer to civilize pioneer Seattle following the Civil War. But in the second book, Would-Be Wilderness Wife, I fell in love with the Wallin family and the little town they were trying to build on the shores of Lake Union. And so, what was originally planned to be a three-book series grew into an eight-book saga as each of the Wallin siblings met their match.

2. The stories about it span nearly a decade. So that I could plausibly write about the last three siblings, two of whom were in their teens in Would-Be Wilderness Wife, I had to expand the timeline as well. The books now span from January 1866 to April 1875. Seattle grew by leaps and bounds during that time. So did Wallin Landing.

3. The town grew with the books. If you’ve read the series, you’ve probably already noticed this one. With the advent of Frontier Matchmaker Bride, the little town has a post office (run by James Wallin), school (with Rina Wallin, his wife, teacher and Dottie Wallin, John’s wife, assistant), church (with Levi Wallin the minister), dispensary (run by Catherine Wallin, Drew’s wife), and general store (James again). Individuals serve the function of blacksmith (John Wallin), seamstress (Nora Wallin, Simon’s wife), music teacher (Callie Wallin, Levi’s wife), and medical professional (Catherine) besides farmer (Simon Wallin) and logger (Drew Wallin). Simon Wallin might even be called an architect of sorts. 

4. Wallin Landing isn’t Wallingford. There is a neighborhood in Seattle called Wallingford. It is actually the location Pa Wallin wanted to build his town originally. I picture the town of Wallin Landing in the Westlake/East Queen Anne area of the Seattle area instead, across the lake and to the west of Wallingford.

Finally, I’m getting lots of mail from readers asking whether I will return to Wallin Landing one day. I hope so. A certain family friend needs to find his happily-ever-after, and there’s Gillian Howard, Ciara and Aiden O’Rourke, Frisco and Sutter Murphy, and the Wallin children who will need spouses in a few years. However, my current publisher is ending its historical romance line, and other publishers are notoriously leery of taking on a series started elsewhere.

This industry has taught me to beware of saying “never.” Things changes, rights are reverted, readers clamor for more. Wallin Landing will be sitting on the shores of Lake Union, waiting.

And so will I.

The Matchmaker Meets Her Match?

It’s always sad to let a series go, but I’m delighted to send off Frontier Bachelors, and my time with Love Inspired Historical, with the story of Beth Wallin. Spunky Beth has cheered her brothers on, and kicked them in the behind, while they courted and married. Those of you who have been following the books may have noticed, however, that Beth has a secret. She’s been reacting strangely the last couple of books to her long-time crush, Deputy Hart McCormick. Here’s why:

She’d just turned one-and-twenty and had filed for her claim. That was what was expected of her, choosing one hundred and sixty acres that would augment the town her family was building at the northern end of Lake Union. She was proud to do it.

She was too proud.

She saw that now. A young lady on the frontier might accomplish much at such an important age—file for her own claim, pursue a career.

She didn’t have to look far. She’d admired Deputy Sheriff Hart McCormick since she was fourteen and he’d ridden out to Wallin Landing the first time. Tall, handsome, worldly even at the age of four-and-twenty then, he’d been the embodiment of the heroes in the romantic adventure novels their father had left her and her brothers. He was the knight Ivanhoe, fighting to save England; the dashing John Alden petitioning the fair Priscilla Mullins to wed. She’d smiled and primped and giggled at him every time he came near. He never seemed to notice.

But when she turned one-and-twenty, she became determined to make him notice. She was certain God had a plan for her life, and it included Hart McCormick. She just needed to give God a little help in moving things along.

She’d dressed in her best gown, a vivid blue with white piping, styled her pale blond curls to spill down behind her. She’d borrowed her brother James’s famous steel dusts and driven the horses in to Seattle to tell Hart how she felt. It hadn’t been hard to locate him. Then as now, Seattle consisted of a few business streets hugging the shoreline with residences and churches on the hillside above, backed by the forest from which they’d been carved. She could scarcely breathe when he’d agreed to walk with her. They’d passed the Brown Church when she’d stopped him, gazing up into his dark eyes.

“I admire you far more than any lady should,” she’d said, voice ringing in her ears. “I don’t suppose you might feel the same.”

He’d gazed down at her a moment, and she’d thought she would slide into the mud of the street, her bones had turned so liquid. She waited for his gaze to warm, his arms to go about her, his lips to profess his undying devotion. That was what happened in her father’s novels. That was the way she’d always dreamed it would be for her.

He’d tipped his black hat to her instead. “That’s mighty kind of you to say, Miss Wallin. But I have no interest in courting you. Best you go on home now.”

Oh!

So, you can imagine Beth’s chagrin when the most important ladies in Seattle seek her out for her matchmaking skills and ask her to find Hart McCormick a bride.

Hart also has a secret, one that keeps him from ever giving his heart again. He may be Beth’s first matchmaking miss, unless they can both admit that she just might be his perfect match.

You can find Frontier Matchmaker Bride in print and e-book at fine retailers such as

Love Inspired

Amazon

Barnes and Noble

Kobo

iTunes 

An independent bookstore near you 

The Book Depository, free shipping worldwide 

Nineteenth Century Heroines: Taking Center Stage

When Asa Mercer went east after the Civil War to entice young ladies to come west, he told them they would be bringing culture to the frontier. But the Mercer Belles I write about in my Frontier Bachelors series weren’t the only ones to make the rough-and-tumble West more civilized. This week’s nineteenth century heroine played a large role, in more ways than one.

Fanny Morgan Phelps was born in Sydney, New South Wales. We aren’t entirely sure when, but she had already made her American debut at Maguire’s Opera House in San Francisco in 1863 as an established actress under her maiden name of Morgan. She was tall and pretty, with an impressive figure and a commanding presence. Her contemporaries called her an Amazon, and some men found themselves so upstaged by her that they refused to play opposite lest she show them up.

Fanny could not only act but sing, specializing at first in shorter plays that highlighted her comedic talents. Reviewers did not seem to know how to take her, for she was called Irish, Australian, and Scottish at various times. Take this piece from the New York Clipper (courtesy of Music in Gotham: The New York Scene 1862-75) when she played at the Bowery Theatre in 1867: 

In personal appearance she is very prepossessing, and she has the power of covering up the deficiencies of those around her by her admirable rendition of characters in which she appears. Her singing is invariably encored…Her style is free, natural, and full of spirit, and at once wins the favor of her audiences.

Sometime during her first California performances, she met Ralph Phelps, a light comedian, who appears to have been some years her senior. He had debuted in New York 1845 and travelled to California in 1854. By the time Fanny joined the Ward Company in Victoria, British Territories, in 1863, she had married Phelps.

For the next 3 years, Fanny was the star of the company, delighting audiences with most of her performances (although a comedy that poked fun of Westerners was not well received, particularly as those in Victoria saw themselves as more educated, enlightened, and sophisticated than the frontiersmen in the Puget Sound area). Ralph was the theatre manager. But as depression loomed in the area, Ward decided to move his company to Portland. Fanny went along.

She didn’t stay there. She was willing to go wherever audiences had a yearning for the theatre. She played what were considered the smaller towns in the Puget Sound area at the time—Seattle and Port Gamble among them. She played at the larger Olympia, the state capital. In 1872, she is recorded as taking part in a benefit in Hawaii. One of the reasons the frontiersmen loved her was that she was willing to come where they were.

Sources say she leased the Theatre Royal in Victoria in 1874 for 11 months, under her own troupe called the Fanny Morgan Phelps Company. But I know she was touring during at least part of that time, for local papers herald her arrival in Seattle, where she staged the first full-length Shakespearean play ever seen in that frontier town, The Taming of the Shrew, on March 15, 1874, at Yesler’s Hall. In the upcoming Frontier Matchmaker Bride, Beth Wallin and Deputy Hart McCormick attend one of her performances. She stared in several plays before travelling north again. Popular actress Annie Pixley (at the left) shared the stage with her.

Along the way she lost Ralph but gained a daughter who she boarded out with a family near Vancouver. She later married a captain of the Royal Navy.

Fanny Morgan Phelps died in San Francisco in 1901, one of the most famous thespians of the West Coast. It was a role she was born to play.