Join us in Exploring the History of 19th Century Frontier America

We are both history lovers who grew up with Laura Ingalls Wilder’s wonderful Little House books about the American frontier in the 19th century. When it came time to pick a historical setting for our fictional town of Harmony Creek, the choice was easy.

While our books make no claims to 100% historic accuracy, if there even is such a thing, we’ve really enjoyed researching late-19th century life in Minnesota to try to make the setting and lives of the characters as authentic as we possibly could. To that end, we did a great deal of research before we started writing The Secret Gift. After we got into the project, we realized just how much there was to learn about American life in the years before and after the American Civil War. Without really planning to, we had stumbled on a period of huge social and technological change. We continue to study and learn more and more as we go along.

If you’d like to join us in exploring the rich history of that time and place, the books and other resources listed here may be of interest to you.

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Online Resources

The websites we relied upon are simply too numerous to list all of them here! However, a few we should mention are:

Non-Fiction Books

Some of the non-fiction books that inspired us include:

Fiction Books

Related fiction we have enjoyed and that continues to motivate us:

Books for Adults

Books for Children