Doctrine of Signatures and Colonial Medicine

        
Susan F. Craft
Author of The Xanthakos Family Trilogy
The Chamomile, Laurel, and Cassia

        The doctrine of signatures refers to the concept that “nature marks each growth according to its curative benefit.” In other words, herbs and plants that resemble various parts of the body can be used to treat ailments of those parts of the body.
        The concept was developed in the early 1500s by Paracelsus and was followed throughout centuries and around the world until the late 1700s when scholars realized that there was no scientific evidence that plant shapes and colors helped in the discovery of medical uses of plants.
        There was a theological justification for the doctrine, as stated by botanists like William Coles who lived until the late 1600s. He said that God would have wanted to show men what plants would be useful for them. He supposed that God had made “herbes for the use of men, and hath given them particular Signatures, whereby a man may read ... the use of them.”
        Coles's The Art of Simpling and Adam in Eden, stated that walnuts were good for curing head ailments because in his opinion, "they Have the perfect Signatures of the Head." Regarding Hypericum, he wrote, "The little holes whereof the leaves of Saint Johns wort are full, doe resemble all the pores of the skin and therefore it is profitable for all hurts and wounds that can happen thereunto."
        Many colonial women who created their own “medicine kits” to care for their families and friends brought the idea of the doctrine of signatures with them when they travelled from Europe to the colonies.
        The concept of signatures is reflected in the common names of some plants whose shapes and colors reminded herbalists of the parts of the body where they were thought to do good, for instance: 

• Eyebright used for eye infections
• Liverwort used to treat the liver
• Lungwort for pulmonary infections
• Toothwort for dental problems
  
• Carrots for the eyes
  
• Mushrooms for the ears
  
   
• Walnuts for the brain
  
• Beans for the kidneys
  

        Lilyan, the main character in my The Xanthakos Family Trilogy, is not only a portrait and mural artist she is a healer who cares for her family and friends with medicines from her kit that she has assembled over the years.
        For a chance to win a copy of Cassia, the third book in the trilogy, can you guess what the tomato was used for according to the doctrine of signatures?
        I will select a winner from among the people responding to this question.

Susan F. Craft is the author of the historical romantic suspense series, The Xanthakos Family Trilogy

Colonial Cosmetics, A Deadly Vanity

By Susan F. Craft
Author, The Xanthakos Family Trilogy, historic romantic suspense

Lady Dawlrymple by Gainsborough (an example of pale skin, rouged cheeks and lips, and dark eyebrows)

Lady Dawlrymple by Gainsborough

(an example of pale skin, rouged cheeks and lips, and dark eyebrows)

        The average colonial American woman, whether due to a lack of money, time, incentive, or religious reasons and cultural mores, wore little or no makeup. European women who visited America from places where makeup was common among the upper classes, often commented in their letters and diaries about this.
       Colonial women did apply skin treatments that were intended to be washed off. Here’s one concoction for a cleanser made of a paste of dried almonds: Beat any quantity you please of Sweet and Bitter Almonds in a marble mortar, and while beating, pour on them a little Vinegar in a small stream to prevent their turning oily; then add 2 drachms of storax in fine powder, 2 drachms of white Honey, and 2 Yolks of Eggs boiled hard; mix the whole into a paste.
        Women, mostly wealthy, who were attentive to their looks did the following:

• For pale, waifish skin:
     Apply rice powder or powder made from lead paint;
     Trace the veins with a blue pencil

• Glistening eyes: 
     Belladonna eye drops

cochineal beetle

vermilion powder

• Lip Color:
     Mix beet juice with lard;
     Use carmine red, a color derived from cochineal beetles imported from Central America (these beetles are used in lipstick today!);
     Vermilion (ground from cinnabar and including mercury) or creuse – both toxic

• Blush:
     Pinch your cheeks or mix beet juice with talc or cornstarch;
     Puncture one’s finger and use the blood for rouge (Ee-ew!);
     Safflower, wood resin, sandalwood, and brazilwood mixed with greases, creams, or vinegars to create a paste

• Mascara/Eyeliner:
     Moisten eyelashes with your fingers or line eyes with coal tar (could cause blindness)

• Anti-aging skin creams:
     Rub bacon grease on your face or egg whites for a “glaze.”

• Lip Plumpers:
     Bite your lip several times throughout the day.

• Perfume/Scents:
     No essential oils like sandalwood, but plenty of rose petals and potpourri were used to mask the smells of the streets

• Acne Products:
     Lemon-juice, rosewater, or concoctions of mercury, alum, honey, and eggshells (which is not advisable)

Recipe for Lead Powder --  
Several Thin Plates of Lead
A Big Pot of Vinegar
A Bed of Horse Manure
Water
Perfume and tinting agent
Steep the lead in the pot of vinegar, and rest it in a bed of manure for at least three weeks. When the lead finally softens to the point where it can pounded into a flaky white powder (chemical reaction between vinegar and lead causes lead to turn white), grind to a fine powder. Mix with water, and let dry in the sun. After the powder is dry, mix with the appropriate amount of perfume and tinting dye.

     The French physician Deshais-Gendron believed in 1760 that pulmonary lung disease among high-born ladies was associated with frequent use of lead face paint and rouge.

In 1767, Kitty Fisher, a famous English beauty,
died at age 23 from lead poisoning.

     During the third quarter of the 18th century, dark eyebrows became all the rage. Over time, lead-based cosmetics caused hair-loss at the forehead and over the brows, resulting in a receding hairline and a bare brow. It became the custom as early as 1703 to trap mice and use their fur for artificial eyebrows, which were glued on. Sometimes, the glue did not always adhere well.
     In 1718, Matthew Prior wrote a poem about eyebrows. Here’s the last stanza:

You want my what? For what?

On little things, as sages write,
Depends our human joy or sorrow;
If we don’t catch a mouse to-night,
Alas! no eyebrows for to-morrow.





Susan F. Craft is the author of The Xanthakos Family Trilogy: The Chamomile (Revolutionary War, released 2011); Laurel (post-Rev War, released 2015); and Cassia (1799-1836) to be released 9/15 -- published by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas

Cherokee Legend, The Raven Mocker

Susan F. Craft
Author of The Chamomile and Laurel

In my 1783 novel, Laurel, the daughter of Lilyan and Nicholas Xanthakos is kidnapped by slavers who attack the Cherokee village that Laurel and her Aunt Golden Fawn are visiting. In search of her daughter, Lilyan comes upon the village to find a medicine man taking part in a ceremony to keep away the Raven Mocker from the dead and dying.

        The Cherokee call evil spirits that torment the sick Sunnayi Edahi, "the Night Goer." The spirits come at night to a sick person’s house and stomp on the roof, beat the side of the house, knock the person out of bed, and drag him on the floor. They try to hasten death. They want the sick person to die faster and not use up any of his life span so that they can take his unused lifetime and add it to their own.
        Of all the Cherokee evil spirits the most dreaded is the Raven Mocker (Kâ'lanû Ahkyeli'skï), the one that robs the dying man of life. They are of either sex and there is no sure way to know one, though they usually look withered and old, because they have added so many lives to their own. At night, when someone is sick or dying in the village, the Raven Mocker goes to the place to take the life. He flies through the air in fiery shape, with arms outstretched like wings, and sparks trailing behind, and a rushing sound like the noise of a strong wind. Sometimes as he flies he makes a cry like a raven and those who hear are afraid, because they know that some man's life will soon end.
        When the Raven Mocker comes to the house he finds others of his kind waiting there, and unless there is a doctor on guard who knows how to drive them away they go inside, all invisible, and frighten and torment the sick man until they kill him. Sometimes to do this they even lift him from the bed and throw him on the floor, but his friends who are with him think he is only struggling for breath. After the evil spirits kill him, they take out his heart and eat it, and so add to their own lives as many days or years as they have taken from his. No one in the room can see them, and there is no scar where they take out the heart, but yet there is no heart left in the body.
        Only one who has the right medicine can recognize a Raven Mocker, and if such a man stays in the room with the sick person these witches are afraid to come in, and retreat as soon as they see him, because when one of them is recognized in his right shape he must die within seven days.

 

         The family will summon a medicine man to keep watch and hold it away until the person recovers. It the person dies, the medicine man will keep watch until the person is buried. After burial the heart cannot be taken. The medicine man drives a sharpened stick into the ground at each corner of the house.
        Then, about noontime he gets ready the Tsâl-agayû'nlï or "Old Tobacco," with which he fills his pipe. He then wraps the pipe in a black cloth. This sacred tobacco is smoked only for this purpose. He then goes out into the forest, and returns just before dark, about which time the sprit will arrive.  
        Lighting his pipe, he goes slowly around the house, puffing the smoke in the direction of every trail by which the sprit might approach. He then goes into the house to wait. When the spirit arrives, the sharpened stick on that side of the house shoots up into the air and comes down like an arrow upon his head. This causes the sprit to die within seven days.

Weaving Historical Fact into Historical Fiction

Susan F. Craft
Author of Laurel and The Chamomile

        I tell people all the time that I’d rather research than write. I love combing through libraries, old documents, and books. Researching for my novels brings me the same excitement Alan Quartermain must have felt hunting for King Solomon’s Mines. I’ve been known to spend an entire day in a library scribbling notes from someone’s diary, spending a wallet of quarters making copies of maps and old newspapers, and trekking from one book or document to the next with a perseverance Lewis and Clark would have applauded. I enjoy the chase when one clue leads me to the next, to the next…
        I call the bits of information, photographs, and drawings I discover “my treasures.”
        I thought it might be of interest to share three of my “treasures”; tell where I found them, and then show how I used them in my newly released novel, Laurel.

Beekeeping
        There’s a scene in Laurel where Lilyan Xanthakos helps her old friend Callum with his beekeeping. I found information on a site entitled Woods Runner’s Diary by Keith H. Burgess. He explains how to find a beehive by placing bits of vermilion flowers on a stone along with drops of honey. The bees, attracted to the honey, land on the rock, and the sticky pieces of vibrant red particles cling to their bodies. Since bees fly in straight lines back to their hives, their path can be determined with a compass. http://woodsrunnersdiary.blogspot.com/2010/03/bee-hunting.html

Here’s how I wove this information into my story:

        As a young girl, she had learned from Callum how to lure bees with honey, then observe as they left, taking note on a compass the direction in which they flew. Since bees always flew in a straight line back to their hives, they were easy to follow.
        Once he located a hive, he would cut down the branch in which it had been built and transport it to his hiving area. There he would suspend it from a pole at the same distance from the ground it had been originally.
        Because of his failing eyesight, he had come up with an ingenious idea of putting flower petals on the stump along with the honey, so that when the bees landed the vermillion pieces would stick to their legs.

chickadee

Birds and Their Sounds
        I found a wonderful site, Birds of the Blue Ridge Mountains that describes the calls of a long list of birds. The site has some of the most beautiful pictures I’ve seen of birds. http://www.theblueridgehighlander.com/Birds-of-the-Smoky-Blue-Ridge-Mountains/index.php

Here’s how I wove the information into my story:

        The farther they traveled, the more the sun burned away the haze, first revealing the edges of tree-topped ridges, then pulling back layer after layer of gossamer veils to expose the highest mountain peaks standing tall against a cerulean sky.
        From a distance echoed the caw-caw of a crow, the fee-bee-fee of chickadees, and the gloomy coo-ooh of a mourning dove.
        Laurel always delighted in those sounds. Lilyan visualized her sitting in their yard, cocking her head to listen, her eyes dancing.

Jenny Diver, a famous pickpocket.
        Fianna, a character in Laurel, is modeled after Jenny Diver, a notorious pickpocket.
        Jenny was born as Mary Young around 1700 in Ireland. She was the illegitimate daughter of a lady’s maid who, after being forced to leave her job, gave birth to Jenny in a brothel. At age 10, Jenny was taken in by a gentlewoman who sent her to school where she learned needlework and to read and write.
        Once she had mastered needlework, she moved to London to become a seamstress. There she met the leader of a gang of pickpockets and learned the skills of a street criminal so well she soon became their leader. Though she was caught several times, imprisoned in Newgate, and sent to the American colonies, she managed to return to London under assumed names.
        Eventually at the age of about 40, her luck ran out, and she was caught and hanged for street robbery.

Here’s part of a conversation Lilyan has with Fianna, who is very pregnant:

       Fianna winked. “Anyways. Just tell the judge you want to plead your belly. He’ll know your meaning. That’s what’s put off my hanging.”
        Lilyan gasped. “You are to hang?”
        “Aye. My fault. All of it. Couldn’t keep me fingers out of other people’s pockets. Got caught in London and sent to Newgate. It being my first offense, they shipped me off to the colonies.” She crossed her swollen ankles. “Thought me and my gang—other pickpockets like me—were coming to the same place, but my man was sent on to Georgia. Surprise that was. Anyways, water under the bridge, as they say.”
        Fianna stopped talking for a moment to watch her stomach pitch and roll. “Won’t be long now, though. This one’s wanting to make its presence known. Sad, don’t you think, that I won’t get to know the babe who gave me a few months’ reprieve?”


Susan F. Craft, who writes inspirational historical romantic suspense, recently retired after a 45-year career as a communications director, editor, and proofreader. To assist authors to “get it right about horses in their works,” Susan worked with the Long Riders’ Guild Academic Foundation to compile A Writer's Guide to Horses (also known as An Equestrian Writer’s Guide) that can be found at www.lrgaf.org. Forty-five years ago, she married her high school sweetheart, and they have two adult children, one granddaughter, and a granddog. An admitted history nerd, she enjoys researching for her novels, painting, singing, listening to music, and sitting on her porch watching the rabbits and geese eat her daylilies. She has two post-Revolutionary War novels being released in 2015 by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas—Laurel, was released January 15, and its sequel Cassia will be in September. Her Revolutionary War novel, The Chamomile, won the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick.

About Laurel
Searching for their toddler and her Cherokee aunt kidnapped by slavers, Lilyan and Nicholas Xanthakos trek from their North Carolina vineyard, through South Carolina backcountry to Charleston, a tinderbox of post-Revolutionary War passions. There Lilyan, a former Patriot spy, faces a grand jury on charges of murdering a British officer. Once free, they follow Laurel’s trail by sea and are shipwrecked on Ocracoke Island. Will they be reunited with their dear child or is Laurel lost to them forever?

Colonial American Medicine Chest

By Susan F. Craft
Author of The Chamomile, an award-winning Revolutionary War romantic suspense.


picture of a medicine chest

 courtesy of http://www.herbalremediesinfo.com/best-herbal-remedies.html

      Sometimes doing research for my colonial era novels can be amusing.
      A couple of weeks ago, I saw my family doctor for a problem I’d been having. The night before, I’d been reading a resource book, “Indian Doctor – Nature’s method of curing and preventing disease according to the Indians.” I took the book with me to show the doctor the Indian cure for my problem.
     What a hoot! We had such fun looking through the book. Seems as if every cure involved mixing something with wine, ale, beer, or liquor. We came to the conclusion that with enough of the “cure,” even if you still had the problem, you wouldn’t care anymore.
      Here’s what the book says for my problem, “Take some pounded panic (panic is the name for powdered corn), and give it to the patient to drink with wine, and he will recover. The same panic, being boiled with goat’s milk, and eaten twice a day, morning and evening, will operate the same.”
      Seriously, knowing the right herbs and natural cures was extremely important in an era where there were very few, if any, doctors available. And, most of the time, those doctors weren’t classically trained.
      Most colonial women maintained a medicine kit that might have included: (Some of the items in this list that may seem misspelled come directly from Nicholas Culpepper's The English Physician, Enlarged in 1653.)

• Valerian root, combined with hops and lemon balm; a sedative for sleep

  

  valerian root

  disorders, insomnia.
• Sweet gum bark, boiled; for sore eyes, wash eyes three times a day Rum or brandy; for a burn apply a wet rag doused
• Two or three swallows of cold water before breakfast; for heartburn
• Feverfew; for headaches/migraines, body aches, and fever
• Southern Wood; for upset stomach (also used as an insect or moth repellent)

  

  southern wood

• Calendula, dried, ground and mixed with animal fat; for cuts 

  

  calendula

• Tansy; for indigestion, cramps, sunburn, and to remove freckles
• Basil; draw poison out of animal bites
• Black Cohosh; for menopause
• Boswellia; for arthritis
• Chamomile tea; for digestive problems
• Flaxseed; for menopausal discomfort and osteoporosis
• White Willow Bark; for back pain
• Ginger; for nausea and vomiting
• Lavender flowers; for anxiety
• Fleabane; for venomous bites, smoke from it kills gnats and fleas; dangerous for women and children
• Hellebore root snuffed up the nose; for sneezing and melancholy and to kill rats and mice
• Penyroyal; for vomiting, gas, and vertigo
• Fox’s tongue softened in vinegar; applied topically, draws out a thorn or splinter
• Rose petals steeped in vinegar; applied topically for headache
• Chalk; for heartburn
• Calamine; for skin irritations
• Cinchona Bark (contains quinine); for fevers
• Garden celedine, pile wort, or fig wort; for boils
• Cottonweed, boyled in lye; it keeps the head from Nits and Lice; being laid among Cloaths, it Keeps them safe from Moths; taken in a Tobacco-pipe it helps Coughs of the Lunges, and vehement headaches.
• Take howse leeke Catts blod and Creame mixed together & oynt the place warme or take the moss that groweth in a well & Catts blod mixed & so aply it warme to the plase whare the shingles be; for the shingles

      Oh, two weeks after I saw my doctor, who prescribed medicine that cured my original problem, I had to see him again for a terrible earache. We looked at the Indian cure that involved lily onions, marsh mallows, oil of violet and, of course, taken with wine. And then, bleeding.

      I’ll stick with the antibiotics.

General Baron de Kalb, Revolutionary War Hero

General Baron de Kalb

By Susan F. Craft

      General Baron DeKalb was born in Germany in 1721. He served with distinction in the French Army during the War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years’ War.
      In 1768 on behalf of France, he traveled to America on a covert mission to determine the level of discontent amongst colonists. In 1777, he returned with his protégé, the Marquis de Lafayette, and joined the Continental Army.
      On August 16, 1780, five miles north of Camden, SC, British forces under Lt. General Charles, Lord Cornwallis defeated the American forces under the command of Major General Horatio Gates. Gates had over 4,000 men, but only 2,000 were effective for combat. Many succumbed to the heat and also the night before, the men had been fed green corn, causing many to suffer stomach problems.
      Cornwallis had around 2,100 men. Six hundred were Loyalist militia and Volunteers of Ireland, and 1,500 were regular troops. Cornwallis also had the infamous and highly experienced Tarleton's Legion, around 250 cavalry and 200 infantry.
      The British troops opened the battle by firing a volley into the militia, followed by a bayonet charge. The militia, lacking bayonets, panicked and ran away. The panic spread to the North Carolina militia, and they also fled. Gates bolted with the first of the militia to run from the field and took refuge 60 miles away in Charlotte, NC. Before he ran, he ordered his right flank under General Baron de Kalb to attack the British militia.
      Under de Kalb, the Continentals fought hard, but they numbered only 600 to 2,000 British troops. Cornwallis ordered Tarleton's cavalry to charge the rear of the Continental line. The cavalry charge broke up the formation of the Continental troops. De Kalb tried to rally his men but was fatally wounded. After only one hour of combat, the Americans were utterly defeated, suffering over 2,000 casualties.
      Tarleton's cavalry pursued and harried the retreating Continental troops for 20 miles. The terrible route for the Americans at the Battle of Camden strengthened the British hold on the Carolinas that were already reeling from the capture of Charleston, SC, by General Sir Henry Clinton in January 1780.
     Here’s how Andrew, a character in my novel, The Chamomile, described General de Kalb.
     You see, General de Kalb wasn’t one of those officers that puts space between him and his men. He was one of us. Most times when we traveled, he didn’t ride his horse, but marched along beside us. Came around each night and shared the food and fire. Slept on the ground with us. And stories? He could tell some of the best stories. Knew how to share silence too. At Camden, we were pretty much beaten. Six hundred of us to their two thousand. De Kalb sent his horse to the back of the lines early on, so he could fight side by side with us on foot. Time after time we charged, reformed, and charged again with the general leading the way. Someone laid his head open with a saber. He was shot. Bayoneted. Cut many times. But he still led one more charge. When the general finally fell, we closed ranks around him. Then Tarleton brought in his dragoons. We fought as long as we could, until most of us broke and ran. I was running for the woods with the rest of them, but I turned in time to see British soldiers headed toward the general to finish him off. They would have, too, but his aide, Chevalier de Buysson, threw his body on top of him and yelled, "No! No! It’s de Kalb. Brigadier General de Kalb."

Wounded de Kalb

    
     Cornwallis ordered his own surgeons to try and save de Kalb. Here is de Kalb’s response, “I thank you sir for your generous sympathy, but I die the death I always prayed for; the death of a soldier fighting for the rights of man.”
     When the general died three days later, Cornwallis found out he was a Mason, same as himself. He had him buried with full military and Masonic honors.
     Years later, on a tour of South Carolina, President George Washington visited the grave of DeKalb and is reported to have said the following, “So there lies the brave de Kalb; the generous stranger who came from a distant land to fight our battles and to water with his blood the tree of our liberty. Would to God he had lived to share with us its fruits.”

Susan F. Craft is the author of the SIBA award-winning Revolutionary War novel, The Chamomile. She has written two sequels to The Chamomile entitled Laurel and Cassia, which will be released in 2015 by Lighthouse Publishing of the Carolinas. Susan is represented by Linda S. Glaz, Hartline Literary Agency.

Colonial American Wallpaper



A fragment of 18th-century English floral wallpaper in the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

collection (acc. no. 1966-164) shows a vibrant verdigris green glaze background

where the paper was protected by an overlap at the seam.

        In early colonial America, wallpaper was used by the more affluent but in the more unimportant rooms of homes. Rooms like the drawing and dining room and ballroom were covered with fabric in strips or panels with fancy cording or wood framing to hide the seams.
        By 1712, when wallpaper had become popular in the colonies, the English introduced a tax on any paper that was "painted, printed or stained to serve as hangings." To get around the taxes, artists hand colored wallpaper after it was hung on the wall.
        The industry grew and in 1773, Parliament repealed that tax, but still levied custom duties. Many wallpapers of that time were predominently blue in color because indigo, the source of the color, was one of the few crops not taxed by the English. In the early 1800s, falsification of wallpaper customs stamps was a crime punishable by death.        

Popular toile pattern usually printed in blue, red, or green.

        One type of wallpaper made during colonial America was a form of stenciling. A wood block was carefully prepared in relief, which means the areas to show “white” are cut away with a knife, chisel, or sandpaper leaving the characters or image to show in “black” at the original surface level.  
        Artisans would apply ink to the block with a roller and bring it into firm and even contact with the paper or cloth to achieve an acceptable print. The content would print “in reverse” or mirror-image. Multiple blocks were used for coloring, each for one color.
        Often, a simple design was block printed, and an artist embellished the design by hand.
        The earliest known fragment of European wallpaper that still exists today was found on the beams of the Lodge of Christ's College in Cambridge, England, and dates from 1509.
        In 1785, the first machine for printing colored tints on sheets of wallpaper was invented, and a patent was registered in 1799 for a machine to produce continuous lengths of paper.

Susan F. Craft is the author of The Chamomile, an inspirational Revolutionary War romantic suspense that takes place in Charleston, SC.  Lilyan Cameron, the heroine of The Chamomile, is a wallpaper and portrait artist. The Chamomile won the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick award. Susan is represented by the Hartline Literary Agency.

Meet Susan F. Craft

     Researching for my novels brings me the same excitement Alan Quartermain must have felt hunting for King Solomon's Mines (the Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr movie version is the one I like best).

     I've been known to spend an entire day in a library scribbling notes from someone's diary, spending a wallet of quarters making copies of maps and old newspapers, and trekking from one book or document to the next with a perseverance Lewis and Clark would have applauded. I enjoy the chase when one clue leads me from one historical treasure to the next. My website www.susanfcraft.com features research I’ve done over the past 20 years including some “gems” that surprised me.  Most of the posts on my personal blog Historical Fiction a Light in Time (http://historicalfictionalightintime.blogspot.com) also feature my research.  The website and blog are my way of sharing with authors looking for good, reliable information (mostly about the Revolutionary War, Colonial America, and the Civil War).

     I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to write. Somewhere in my attic I have a book, The Mystery of the Whistling Cave, which I wrote and bound myself when I was eight and enthralled with Nancy Drew.

     My latest novel, The Chamomile, released in 2011 by Ingalls Publishing Group, is a Revolutionary War romantic suspense, that takes place in Charleston, SC, during the two years the British occupied the city. It won the Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance Okra Pick, for best novel of the season.

     The Chamomile is the fourth book I’ve authored. The first two were SC State Library award-winning professional works in the field of mental health, and the third, self-published in 2006, is A Perfect Tempest, a historical fiction set in Columbia during the Civil War.

     One of the most exciting and fun writing projects I’ve ever done was to collaborate with the international Long Riders Guild, in particular, New York Times bestselling author, Doug Preston; author Jeremy James, known as “Great Britain’s poet of the saddle; and Long Riders Guild founder and author CuChullaine O’Reilly to compile A Writer's Guide to Horses.  The Guide provides authors comprehensive information about horses to assist them to accurately portray horses in their works. It is available on the website of the Long Riders' Guild Academic Foundation, www.lrgaf.org. 

     I have a degree in Broadcast Journalism from the University of South Carolina. My 40-year career includes working for SC Educational Television, the SC Department of Mental Health, the SC College of Pharmacy, and currently for the SC Senate.

     I belong to the American Christian Fiction Writers, the Palmetto Christian Writers Network, the Historical Novel Society, the SC Writers Workshop, the SC Historical Society, the Robert Burns Society, the Colonial American Christian Writers, She Writes, Goodreads, Facebook, and Pinterest.

Steeler as a puppy. He's even cuter now.

     I married Rick, who was my high school sweetheart and now husband of 43 years. We live in South Carolina and have two adult children whom we adore and one grandchild who is my “bestest buddy.”  We also have a granddog, Steeler, a doxipoo who stole my heart the moment I saw him as a puppy.

     I gave my heart to Christ as a teenager and am an active member of my church, singing in the choir since I was ten.

     Like many people, I have a “bucket list.” So far, I have screamed my way down the Nantahala River whitewater rafting (although the screaming part was not on the list); I parasailed (breathtaking experience); I scheduled a hot air balloon ride, which, sadly, was cancelled due to bad weather (this greatly relieved my sister whom I had cajoled into going with me); and I recently fulfilled a lifelong dream to learn how to play the drums by joining the University of South Carolina New Horizons Band – the clarinet is next, I think, as the percussion instruments are too heavy to haul around. I want to visit at least ten national parks, take a mule ride through the Grand Canyon, ride a gondola in Venice, and visit a winery in Tuscany, Italy.

My giveaway will be a copy of The Chamomile, a packet of chamomile seeds, and a mobcap.