Sometimes, I think this blog is rather boring. Whether that’s true or not, I think it would benefit if it provided readers with the views, experiences, and writing adventures of other authors. With that in mind, let me introduce you to Kathyrn Haueisen. I met Kathryn at  the Lithopolis Book Fair last year. Even before meeting her face-to-face, I was aware that her book Mary Brewster’s Love Life: The Matriarch of the Mayflower was published by Van Velzer Press, which also published my YA novel, The Secrets We Carry: Journal of a Girl in Trouble.

Kathryn retired from church work to pursue writing. She writes from her condo community near Columbus and enjoys traveling to explore the places that become part of her books about encounters between people of different cultures. She is currently working on her 8th book, which is set in Licking County, home to the UNESCO World Heritage ancient Indian mounds. 

At the conclusion of her post, are links to her social media platforms and places where Mary Brewster’s Love Life: The Matriarch of the Mayflower can be purchased.

From here on, I’m going to let Kathyrn do all the “talking.”

Since retiring, I’ve focused on writing about encounters between the first occupants of Turtle Island and my ancestors who arrived via the Mayflower. That branch of the family migrated into the Ohio Valley in 1803. The wave of settlers crossing the Appalachians 200 plus years ago resulted in the Indian Removal Act. That legislation displaced several Indigenous tribes such as the Shawnee, Delaware, Miami, Ottawa, and others from Ohio to predominately Oklahoma.

The story of the Mayflower eventually led to catastrophic outcomes for the Pokanoket and other Indigenous nations who were soundly defeated in King Philip’s War in the late 1600s. I wrote about the earliest encounters before that war in Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures. I tracked down three generations of a family whose ancestor was Massasoit Ousamequin, the grand leader of New England area Indigenous peoples in the 1600s when the famous ship found its way to Cape Cod. They graciously read the manuscript, made corrections and suggestions to improve it, and wrote the foreword to it.

For Mary Brewster’s Love Life: The Matriarch of the Mayflower, I focused on what that journey was like for the wives who left all behind to accompany their husbands. Spoiler alert. It was incredibly difficult. Eighteen wives boarded the ship. Four were still alive a year after they arrived in New England. Mary Brewster, my ancestor, was one of them.

The current book project continues the story of encounters between Indigenous people and Anglo settlers. This one is set in current times in Licking County, location of two of the numerous ancient Indigenous mounds recently designated a UNESCO World Heritage site. Through the lectures and notes of a fictional Shawnee college professor, readers learn about the cultural clashes of the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the Ohio Valley when white settlers crossed the Appalachians by the thousands shortly after the Revolutionary War. The professor and an ambitious newly employed development firm scout compete to determine the future of a local farm coming up for sale. He’s a fictional descendant of Anglo settlers who entered the Ohio Valley in the 19th century.

Because one of the main characters is Shawnee, I searched for months to find someone from that community to preview the book. My efforts paid off when Chief Glenna Wallace of the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma agreed to read the manuscript. When I hadn’t heard from her yet weeks after I sent the story, I feared she would ask me not to publish it. She did get back to me and wrote many good things about the book. However, she also pointed out some aspects that she considered disrespectful of her culture and made suggestions on how to change that. That was exactly what I needed and hoped to hear. With gratitude for her feedback, I am now working with Van Velzer Press to publish Love and Land Grab in Ohio Country: The Tale of Two Cultures. This is a novel about the tension between preserving the past and developing the future.

A word of caution to authors who would write about a culture not their own. Know you are heading into controversy. Some insist we have no right to do so. Others, and I am among them, think we not only have the right, but also the responsibility to show readers what life is like for people of different cultures. The important thing is to write with respect, solicit feedback from members of that culture, and incorporate their feedback. I consider myself a guest in someone else’s home. I’ve made several significant changes to the stories based on feedback from editors and lay readers within the cultures not my own.

We live in a diverse world, which I think is delightful. Aren’t flower gardens more spectacular when they are full of different varieties of flowers? I’ve found the best way to address cultural differences is learn about them. Sample the food. Hear the music. Read the literature. Visit their communities. With the advent of modern communication and transportation, we are indeed one global village. We all do better when all do better. None of us choose our place of birth or our ethnic heritage. Each of us does choose how we engage with other occupants of this glorious and fragile place called Earth. Shalom. Aquene. Peace.

Kathryn M. Haueisen
Freelance Author, Pastor, Speaker
Website: HowWiseThen  
Facebook: AuthorKHaueisen  
Instagram: kathrynhaueisen8
LinkedIn: AuthorKHaueisen
Mayflower Chronicles: The Tale of Two Cultures
and Mary Brewster’s Love Life
Now available wherever books are sold, including:
Bookshop.org
Amazon.com
Barnes & Noble
Blue Willow Bookshop
Gramercy Books Bexley