{"id":3270,"date":"2020-08-09T13:27:50","date_gmt":"2020-08-09T19:27:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/?p=3270"},"modified":"2020-08-09T13:27:50","modified_gmt":"2020-08-09T19:27:50","slug":"just-published-my-new-historical-novel-marianos-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/?p=3270","title":{"rendered":"Just published: my new historical novel, \u201cMariano\u2019s Woman\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Readers of my first two historical novels often ask why Tak\u00e1nsy, the Indian wife of Mariano Medina, inflicted scars on her arm for some mysterious reason. Now, with the publication of my third historical novel, Mariano\u2019s Woman<\/em>, they\u2019ll have an answer.<\/p>\n

This new book picks up Tak\u00e1nsy\u2019s story where Mariano\u2019s Crossing<\/em> ends. Torn by grief over the death of her fifteen-year-old daughter Lena, Tak\u00e1nsy desperately tries to connect with her daughter\u2019s spirit-being. But before she can join Lena in the Great Beyond, Tak\u00e1nsy must re-live the horror of her early life by telling a story she has never told anyone else\u2014her \u201cgreat sin\u201d as a young woman.<\/p>\n

Tak\u00e1nsy was a real person whose story has always fascinated me. She was born into the Flathead tribe along the Bitterroot River in Montana sometime in the early 1800s, then left her people to marry a French fur trader named Louis Pap\u00edn. After she was traded to Mariano Medina in 1844 for the substantial price of six horses and six blankets, they set up a successful trading post and stage stop on the Big Thompson River near Loveland, Colorado, known as Mariano\u2019s Crossing.<\/p>\n

When her daughter died in 1872, Tak\u00e1nsy was heartbroken. According to historian Zethyl Gates, she would beat her chest and wail, \u2018Me sickee, me go to Lena!\u2019 That got me to wondering, which afterlife? Tak\u00e1nsy was both Catholic and Native American. Would she and her daughter be able to connect in the spirit world?<\/p>\n

Exploring the great mystery of what happens to our spirits after we die became a theme of the book, along with imagining the events in Tak\u00e1nsy\u2019s girlhood that might have led her to leave her people. That took me on an eye-opening journey through nineteenth-century clashes between Jesuit \u201cblackrobes,\u201d mountain men and Montana Indian tribes.<\/p>\n

Writing the book was a challenge. Trying to walk in the moccasins of an Indian woman who lived a hundred and eighty years ago leaves one open to accusations of \u201ccultural appropriation.\u201d My desire to connect with people from a different culture, time and place kept me going, along with encouragement from Gray Wolf, a Cheyenne elder, healer and friend.<\/p>\n

Mariano\u2019s Woman completes a trilogy that includes Mariano\u2019s Crossing<\/em> and Mariano\u2019s Choice<\/em>, all published by Pronghorn Press. The books may be ordered from local bookstores or purchased online on Amazon. Autographed copies are available on my website.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mariano’s Woman, published by Pronghorn Press, is a historical novel featuring nineteenth-century clashes between Jesuit \u201cblackrobes,\u201d mountain men and Montana Indian tribes. Based on the true story of Takansy, the Indian wife of early Colorado pioneer Mariano Medina, award-winning author David M. Jessup explores the theme of what happens to souls in the afterlife. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[146,76,150,151,98,149,71,73,147,148],"class_list":["post-3270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-afterlife","tag-american-west","tag-blackrobe","tag-flathead-indians","tag-historical-fiction","tag-jesuit","tag-mariano-medina","tag-mountain-men","tag-near-death-experiences","tag-out-of-body-experiences"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3270"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3273,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3270\/revisions\/3273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidmjessup.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}