From the Author
The day Pat and I discovered Agatha, I sat on the stairs by the window seat and Agatha told me the bare bones of her story. She told me her name, age, that she had come from Ireland, and that she was en route to California as part of a covered wagon expedition when her daughter died. As for her life after Sarah's death, she told me she'd had help from the Indians and I drew the house they'd built her, which I later learned was called a wigwam. In fits and starts over the next several years, I wrote for her. Whenever I thought of all the details needed to complete her story, I would wonder how I'd ever be able to get it written, since, as a Canadian, I knew nothing of U. S. history in the 1800s. The thought of the project, taken as a whole, was overwhelming. I found I had to work on it one small section at a time, and not think about the entire story.
Each week, I would start out with a two or three page outline of a section of her story. My family provided feedback on the content. Using the questions they asked, I would return to the outline and add the detail. When I was on the right track, the words seemed to flow onto the page. But there were times when I couldn't write anything in response to suggestions; I knew then I was trying to write something that hadn't happened to Agatha. For instance, my husband was sure that she must have encountered Joseph Naper, or some members of the Naper Settlement. Agatha hadn't given this information to me, but Bill made a good argument for it, so I sat down to write it. For the next week, I tried to write about such an encounter, but I was unable to put one paragraph together. Finally, I trusted my own feelings and said, "Okay, Agatha, apparently you didn't meet the settlers, so tell me how you avoided them." Then my pen flew across the pages as she described being forewarned of their approach because of their noise, and thus being able to avoid them.
