I never set out to write about Indians. Okay, Native Americans. But you see, when I began my career in historical romance back in the late Pleistocene, the name—or misname (blame Columbus for that one)—was Indian, or American Indian. I’d grown up reading Zane Grey, Luke Short, Edison Marshall and many more western writers. Not a big surprise that my first two novels were western romances, tales of Old California about horse breeders, gold miners and ranchers. I don’t do cowpokes, lonesome or otherwise.But then this idea with a hero as an outsider came to me—a man disowned as unworthy by his father. The father (villain of the piece, of course) would force a young woman into marriage, intending for her to give him a pure-blooded heir. Now this could be anything from a Medieval to a Victorian. It could be set lots of places. But I’d just watched a PBS special on the High Plains Horse Indians (yes, they did have televisions back then). After some research, I decided my hero’s mother would be Northern Cheyenne and his cruel father would be a cattle baron. The lovely, unhappy young wife (who becomes a widow midway through the book) would fall in love with the half-breed hero.
The thought of a mystical bond between the lovers was not part of the equation. This was going to be a relationship-oriented love story about a man finding acceptance through the love of a woman who was brave enough to defy the bigotry of white society. But when I began to write the opening chapter, a peculiar thing happened (cue the eerie music…or maybe a slowly beating tom-tom). The hero came to me as a youth on his vision quest. When he saw the hawk swooping down from the sky to carry away a wolf cub, my seven-year-old heroine awakened a thousand miles away from a frightening nightmare. She had just shared his medicine dream.
I swear I am not making this up.
Well, okay, I’m a fiction writer. I did make it up. But I had never consciously considered it when I outlined the plot. Hawk and Carrie shared a bond that endured over miles and years until destiny brought them together, through the mystical power of his Cheyenne grandfather.
Since then I’ve written many romances with Cheyenne, Apache, Taino, Muskogee and Sioux characters. Some were heroes or heroines, others wise medicine men or women. Armchair shrinks could say I’m just using another manifestation of Jung’s “Old Wise Man Archetype. I won’t disagree. Like the idea of “the West” itself, this is a primal, powerful myth.
Through Native American mysticism a grand design created for special lovers completes the circle. Their lives are guided so that they fulfill their destiny by learning to understand each other even though they come from different worlds. Being part of this mystical universe allows them to understand themselves and how they are fated to live out their lives together. That is the bedrock of any good romance.
In my July release, Chosen Woman, I added another layer of conflict to the mystical elements. Fawn, my Cheyenne heroine, is the Chosen Woman who inherits her grandfather’s gift of prophesy. Her recurring visions while she is being educated back East involve a red prairie wolf that she comes to consider her totem, her protector. But when a cocky red-haired Irishman appears to guard her on her journey home to her people, she feels an irrational aversion to him. He, in fact, terrifies her. This arrogant white man could not be her protector…could he? At first Jack believes Fawn is simply a spoiled brat, but after she saves his life by knocking him from his horse just before a bullet whizzes by his head, he gets a creepy feeling. Maybe there is some truth to what her white adoptive father told him about her ability to see the future. On the trip from St. Louis to Oklahoma Territory, Fawn realizes that she is developing greater control of her powers with Jack at her side. When evil men kidnap her, she projects her vision of them to him. Through her eyes, he sees them and the place where they hide. At story’s end, he understands and she accepts that he is her Red Wolf, her spirit guide and protector. Neither is complete without the other.
Call it a match made in heaven…or a design decreed by the Powers. Either way, it’s pure romance magic.
