NEXT CHAPTER AUTHOR

Myra Hargrave McIlvain

Myra Hargrave McIlvain has free-lanced as a writer of Texas historical markers, written articles for newspapers all over the country and for magazines such as Texas Highways. Her love of a good tale prompted her to write six nonfiction books about famous and infamous Texas sites and characters. Her most recent, Texas Tales, Stories that Shaped a Landscape and a People, is a collection of 113 of her favorite Texas history blog posts.

McIlvain’s new love is historical fiction, which includes Stein House and The Doctor’s Wife, both of which chronicle the development of the thriving German seaport of Indianola on the Texas coast. The characters in those award-winning books have returned in Waters Plantation an award-winning sequel that opens in 1875 post Reconstruction Washington County.

A Long Way Home is McIlvain’s eleventh book––the tale of a woman whom everyone thinks died on 9/11. Instead, she is living a new life in the Texas Rio Grande Valley.

Currently McIlvain is working on THE RUNAWAY SCRAPE, a sequel to THE KNOTTED RING

IN THE AUTHOR’S WORDS

Author interview

Interview submitted 27 October 2023.

What inspired you to start writing?

I've always loved telling stories, first the made-up tales about raising children, then I became fascinated with the German immigrants who came to Texas in the 19th century. I was eager to tell their stories; the most interesting way for me was through historical fiction.

Who are some of your favorite authors and books?

"A Gentleman in Moscow," Amor Towles
"Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen," Sarah Bird
"News of the World," Paulette Jiles
"A Man Called Otto," Fredrik Bachman

What would you like to tell readers who have just discovered your books, but haven't read one yet?

People who read my books say that my characters come alive for them They want to keep turning pages to find out what the characters will do.

Who is the favorite character you created, and how did they come into being?

Having to pick my favorite character feels like picking my favorite child because that is what my characters become for me. If I must choose, perhaps Helga in "Stein House, A Gerrman Family Saga" captures my heart as a widow who comes on to Texas after watching her drunk husband drown as their ship pulled away from the German dock. A woman of strong passions, she operates a boarding house for boarders of all stripes whose involvement in the rigors of a town on the edge of the frontier influences and molds all their lives––the cruelties of yellow fever and slavery, the wrenching choices of Civil War and Reconstruction, murder, alcoholism, and the devastation wrought by terrible hurricanes.

What are your future plans as a writer?

I want to continue writing about Susannah and Hezekiah, the main characters in "The Knotted Ring." I want to explore their survival during the Texas War for Independence from Mexico and possibly a third book in the series as they and their children face slave issues leading up to and during the Civil War.