AUTHOR FAVOURITES: PERFUME POWDER AND LEAD: HOLY SISTERS by JULIETTE DOUGLAS

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!’

https://www.amazon.com/Perfume-Powder-Lead-Holy-Sisters/dp/153483656X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr

AUTHOR FAVOURITES: SKELETONS by JULIETTE DOUGLAS

Award-winning Juliette Douglas tells me she really enjoyed writing SKELETONS, the third episode of her acclaimed Freckled Venom trilogy, because ‘I got to blow stuff up.’ Her heroine, former bounty-hunter Lacy Watson, is now married to Marshal Rawley Lovett and settled down in Wyoming. Then her son and daughter, and other children, are kidnapped by Joe Kannon. Kannon plans to sell them to a slave trafficker in Mexico, but doesn’t reckon on Lacy pursuing, or the kids themselves.

As SKELETONS touches on school teachers (who were almost always women) in the Old West, I thought I’d talk briefly about the remarkable ‘culture bearers’ who helped tame and civilise the west not with guns but with learning and by spreading knowledge.

Before the American Civil War school teaching had been largely a male profession, but after the war they abandoned it for better paid work. Many of the women who replaced them were young, some as young as 15, but their results could be impressive: between 1870 and 1900 Nebraska and Kansas boasted some of the highest literacy rates in the U.S. That was despite a serious lack of resources.

Schools themselves were usually one room affairs, sometimes converted bunkhouses, shacks, log cabins, even brush arbours. Teacher SARAH NEWMAN recalled her room being ‘maybe 10 by 12 feet.’ Classrooms were often over-crowded, with teachers managing as many as 45 pupils. Only eight grades were taught, and usually you’d have children in all eight grades in the one room of the schoolhouse.

A schoolhouse Woods, Oklahoma 1895

ANNA WEBBER in Kansas in 1881 lamented the lack of ‘benches, seats, blackboards or writing desks… for seats we have 2 boards placed on rocks.’ Classes tended to focus on the basics: reading, writing, arithmetic, history, spelling and penmanship - difficult to teach when you didn’t have slates, paper or pencils. The Bible was often the only book a family had to send to school for reading practice. For many years, the main textbook was the McGuffey Reader. With this shortage of books, teachers had to improvise. Lessons were largely memorization, recitation and oral drilling. ELIZA MOTT was a teacher who taught the alphabet using the inscriptions on tombstones! Spelling bees were also popular.

School was usually only open four or five months a year out west. Children in farming communities were expected to help with planting and harvesting. So they might only be available for school between planting and harvesting time – which in Nebraska meant school ran from October to May.

Schoolhouse, Nebraska 1889

The frontier sometimes threw up specifically western challenges for these young women teachers. In 1872 SISTER BLANDINA SEGALE, a nun 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.

When the ‘Great Blizzard’ of January 1888 swept the Great Plains, 19 year old Nebraska school teacher MINNIE FREEMAN led thirteen children from her schoolhouse to the safety of her home, half a mile away. It’s believed she tied the children together with twine or clothesline during the blinding snowstorm, carrying one child in her arms.

‘Song of the Great Blizzard: Thirteen Were Saved’ or ‘Nebraska's Fearless Maid’, was written in her honour by William Vincent.

I dipped into blogs by KATHRYN ALLBRIGHT and ANNA KATHRYN LANIER for some of this information.

A school mistress out west is one of the main characters in what is generally regarded as the first real western novel ever published – ‘The Virginian’ by Owen Wister. 

Diane Lane plays a western schoolmistress in 'The Virginian' (2000)

Kids on the frontier feature in TV shows like THE MONROES,

LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE and THE RIFLEMAN

The Rifleman

and in movies like BAD COMPANY, THE MISSING and THE COWBOYS.

'The Cowboys' (1972)

Reviews of SKELETONS:

‘Thrilling’

‘Fun and gritty Western’

‘Even more spit and vinegar than its predecessors’

‘Heart-wrenching’

‘Douglas is a master story teller.’

https://www.amazon.com/Freckled-Venom-Skeletons-Juliette-Douglas-ebook/dp/B00ZCQE760/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

AUTHOR FAVOURITES: COPPERHEAD by JULIETTE DOUGLAS

Juliette Douglas mentioned 3 favourites of her own books to me. She tells me COPPERHEAD, the first of her ‘Freckled Venom trilogy,’ is dear to her heart because it was her first book. And it did win the Laramie Award for best debut western. Juliette’s heroine in COPPERHEAD is Lacy Watson, a female bounty hunter pursuing outlaws who is also pursued by demons in her own past. She joins up with Wyoming Marshal Rawley Lovett to bring three psychopathic brothers to justice.

I’ve blogged about bounty hunters before, a staple of western fiction although hard to find in the real history of the Old West – male or female. One gun-toting western woman who was real was CALAMITY JANE – real name MARTHA JANE CANARY (or CANNARY.)

Much of Jane’s life – like the origin of her nickname - is shrouded in legends of her own making. She was born in Missouri, although her given birth year of 1852 has been questioned.  She claimed to have been a muleskinner working for the U.S. Cavalry. Captain John G. Bourke, who was on General Crook’s campaign against the Sioux in 1876, wrote: ‘It was whispered that one of our teamsters was a woman, and no other than ‘Calamity Jane’ a character famed in border story.’ Jane claimed also to have been an army scout who fought Indians, but another cavalry officer, Captain Jack Crawford, stated: ‘Jane… never was in an Indian fight. She was simply a notorious character, dissolute and devilish, but possessed a generous streak which made her popular.’ As a sign of her generosity, she once gave a destitute woman her shoes.

There doesn’t seem to be any hard evidence that she worked as a guard on a stage coach. She was acquainted with Wild Bill Hickok in Deadwood shortly before his murder there in August 1876, but as to whether she secretly married him or gave birth to his child… who knows? The story that she confronted Hickok’s murderer, Jack McCall with a meat cleaver also can’t be verified.

Jane did appear in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in 1893 as a story-teller. It would appear that she lived in various locations in Wyoming, Montana and South Dakota and did work as a laundress and a prostitute, drink heavily, carouse loudly and sometimes wear men’s clothes. She also married several times and had two daughters. She died of pneumonia in 1903.

Jane has been widely portrayed in romanticised form by actresses from Doris Day, in the musical named after her,

to Stefanie Powers in an episode of ‘Bonanza’ (where she has an unhistorical relationship with Doc Holliday!)

Stefanie Powers  (as Calamity Jane) with Michael Landon in 'Bonanza'

Anjelica Huston’s portrayal in ‘Buffalo Girls’ (1995) was undoubtedly nearer the truth.

Sharon Stone in the movie ‘The Quick & the Dead’ isn’t exactly a bounty-hunter, but she’s the nearest to one I could find!

The last time I looked all reviews for COPPERHEAD are 4 and 5 star.

‘A gripping and compelling western with an engaging heroine’

‘Truly outstanding’

’The dialogue was wonderful’

‘I’d like to see it made into a film’

https://www.amazon.com/Freckled-Venom-Copperhead-Juliette-Douglas/dp/1502566028