Award-winning
Juliette Douglas tells me PERFUME POWDER
& LEAD: HOLY SISTERS ‘was a hoot to write because of all the crazy
things that happened to them.’ ‘Them’ are 3 female con artists masquerading as sisters of a holy order arriving in the same Wyoming town that is the hub for
Douglas’s acclaimed ‘Freckled Venom’ trilogy. This novel features a perennial
of western fiction, if not fact – the bounty hunter, except this bounty hunter
is ex-priest Tate Morgan.
Just to clarify the difference between nuns and sisters: Inside the Catholic Church at least nuns remain in the sheltered life of a convent, whilst sisters go out into the world and do such jobs as nurses and missionaries.
600 nuns and sisters from 12 religious communities served as U.S. Army nurses during the American Civil War. They performed these duties on the battlefield and sometimes gave their lives. At Gettysburg one St. Joseph Sister wiped the blood from the face of a young soldier to discover he was her 18-year-old brother.
They also ministered. In that capacity, SISTER MARY BUCKNER toured the late 19th Century Montana mining camps on horseback.
Some real life sisters in the Old
West also worked as school teachers. In 1872 Italian-born SISTER BLANDINA
SEGALE, of the Sisters of Charity order, was sent from Ohio to teach in remote
Trinidad, Colorado. It was a rough mining camp, and Sister Blandina once had to
save the father of one of her pupils from a lynch mob, which she bravely faced
down.
The account of her confronting (and not
being cowed by) BILLY THE KID is somewhat controversial. It's likely the
outlaw she confronted was the highwayman WILLIAM LEROY, (aka ARTHUR POND) who some
call the ‘original’ Billy the Kid as he seems to have been using that nickname
before the more famous outlaw slain by PAT GARRETT.
Nuns or
Holy Sisters in western film and TV include Shirley MacLaine who masquerades as
a nun as she sides with Clint Eastwood in ‘Two Mules for Sister Sara’
Claire
Griswold, rescued by Steve McQueen in an episode of ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’
and Jane
Merrow (another sister who isn’t what she seems) in an episode of ‘Alias Smith
and Jones.’
Jane
Merrow (on left) in ‘Alias Smith and Jones’
Reviews
of PERFUME POWDER & LEAD: HOLY
SISTERS:
‘Author
Douglas has developed strong and memorable characters in the three women. This
book has both humor and insight, a delightful combination in a western tale.’
‘A great
series of twists and turns’
‘Great
writing’
‘Wonderful
story telling’
‘Fantastic
story!’
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