This September will bring the publication of my seventh novel, Innocents at Home. I have a blog post on how I feel about that here. In this post, though, I’m going to celebrate the real people that star in my novel. Some readers may know that I write heritage fiction, based on my ancestors. The two female protagonists featured in Innocents at Home are also part of my family tree (see my family tree in this post). The family story goes that these two women, previously unknown to each other, sailed on the cruise with Mark Twain that inspired his novel Innocents Abroad. After the cruise, one of the women loved the author and one hated him.

A five-month voyage to the Holy Land in 1867 led Mark Twain to write his novel Innocents Abroad. But what happened to those innocents after they returned to New York?

Nina Larrowe was the daughter of Samantha Lockwood, one of the protagonists in my novel The River Remembers. Nina also features in my short story “True Legacy” that is included in Paper Lantern Writers’ anthology Unlocked. Innocents at Home falls in between those two writings. The River Remembers ends with Nina as a young child in Iowa. Her father, a prominent lawyer and personal friend of Abraham Lincoln, went to California in 1851 to find gold. His family joined him in Nevada City, California, a few years later. This is where they met Samuel Clemens, before he became Mark Twain. In 1861, James Churchman attended Lincoln’s inauguration, and a few years later was appointed consul to Chile. He and his family spent four years in Valparaiso, returning to California afterwards. The family finally relocated to Austin, Nevada, where Nina met Marcus Larrowe. Nina and Marcus married in 1864. The life-changing cruise took place in 1867.

Emmeline (Emma) Beach was the daughter of Moses Beach, owner of the New York Sun. He was a prominent New Yorker descended from William Brewster, the religious leader of the Mayflower colony. Family legend says that it was Moses Beach’s great-grandmother, Drusilla Brewster, who sold the sea chest, belonging to William Brewster, upon which the Mayflower Compact was signed. In 1854, Moses and his family moved to Brooklyn Heights and joined Plymouth Church, where they met Reverend Henry Ward Beecher. In 1867, four months before the cruise, Moses’ wife gave birth to a daughter fathered by Rev. Beecher.

The cruise took five months, but it’s not included my novel at all. Mark Twain’s words about the voyage, however, are what kick off the action. He was not kind to his fellow travelers, saying they “stared at people and made them feel small… and bore down on them with America’s greatness until we crushed them.” That is only a sample of the words that would devastate Nina’s reputation, eventually ruining her marriage. Emma remained his friend, but he broke her heart when he married Olivia Langdon, sister of another shipmate.

Nina craves the limelight and becomes an actress after she is separated from her husband. Her career is cut short when her mother discovers what she is doing and orders her home. Emma, on the other hand, hates having attention focused on her. She marries a famous artist and is content to live in his shadow and raise his children from a former wife. That is, until his eccentricities require her to step up and manage his career, drawing attention to herself. Both women face obstacles to their chosen lifestyles, and they inspire each other to discover the courage to live life on their own terms.

Stay tuned! There’s a lot of fun ahead as I do cover reveals, giveaways, and release promos!