The Great Wagon Road – Janet Grunst

Hi Susan, book three of your Great Wagon Road series, A Trail To Love, will be released this September. Please share a little about yourself and what sparked your writing journey.

I was married to my high school sweetheart until his death 48 years later. God blessed us with two wonderful children, a granddaughter, and a granddog, a doxi-poo with attitude. I retired after a 45-year career in writing, editing, and communicating in business settings.

I write Christian historical romance and inspirational historical romantic suspense. Can you believe I’m 75 years old and writing romance?

I authored the national award-winning trilogy Women of the American Revolution—The Chamomile, Laurel, and Cassia.

I collaborated with the International Long Riders’ Guild Academic Foundation to compile An Equestrian Writer’s Guide (www.lrgaf.org), including almost everything you’d ever want to know about horses.

I admit to being an unabated history nerd who would rather research than write. My adult children will happily relay the times when they were children and our family would visit sensory-rich places such as Cape Romain Wildlife Refuge, Bulls Bay, SC, for me to soak in the sights, sounds, and smells to include in my novels. I enjoy painting and sitting on my porch with my dog, Steeler, who dispassionately watches geese eat my daylilies, but barks at every bug that invades his space. I most recently took up the ukulele and am trying to play Izzy’s version of Somewhere Over the Rainbow.

My third-grade teacher, Mrs. King, engendered my thirst for writing when she read aloud to us the book she was writing about two Native American children. She made me aware that authors weren’t “people out there somewhere.” I could be one too. At eight, I wrote my first novel, The Mystery of the Whistling Cave. I bound it with heavy cardboard and sewed it together with dental floss.

What inspired you to write this particular series?

My husband Rick and I grew up watching the tv series Wagon Train. The stories of pioneers and settlers fascinated me and inspired a healthy respect for our sturdy forebears who risked everything to make a new life. When I shared with Rick my discovery of the Great Wagon Road that stretched, not out West, but down the US east coast from Philadelphia to Savannah, GA, he thought it would make a fantastic series. I couldn’t resist the spark that fired my imagination and curiosity about the mostly Scots-Irish immigrants who traveled that trail beginning in the early 1700’s.

Please tell us about Trail To Love.

A widowed father…a heartbroken nanny…and a wagon train journey that will change their lives forever.

Since the death of her fiancé, Anne Forbes has given up on the life she thought she’d have. After taking a role as nanny to her two young nephews, she’s grown close to her brother’s family—a replacement for the one she never had the chance to start. But when she accompanies them on the wagon trail to their new life in South Carolina, a handsome and gallant widowed father who’s also part of the group catches her eye and her heart, making her wonder if God might have plans of love for her after all. If only the beautiful woman the man escorts didn’t have her sights set on him.

Michael Harrigan never considered remarrying after the death of his wife. No woman could ever compare. But when he meets the gentlehearted Anne while escorting his sister-in-law on their journey to the Blue Ridge Mountains, he’s taken aback by Anne’s lovely voice and her compassion. As they face the trials and adventures of life on the trail, he finds himself open to the idea of marriage for the first time in many years.

But when disaster strikes the wagon train, Michael and Anne must work side-by-side to save lives. In the midst of their struggles, can they find a way to abandon their separate trails of grief and hardship for the trail to love?

Is there a message or a spiritual theme in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

I do have similar themes throughout my writing–faith under pressure and relinquishing willfulness and reliance upon self-sufficiently. Modern day Christians say, “Let go and let God.”

I visualize my body of work as a tapestry through which I’ve spun a golden thread of faith made from finely hatchelled flax silk. Although it may occasionally disappear from sight, it’s always there, a constant foundation, binding the piece together.

Can you tell us anything about your next book or a current work in process?

Honestly, after my husband passed, I thought I might never write again. God had other ideas. I submitted my novel that my husband inspired, Love’s Winding Road, to Wild Heart Books. They liked it and asked if I would write a 3-part series. I think my neighbors probably heard me swallowing as I considered the request. Writing two more novels in a year was an achievement that amazed me, because I am not a fast writer.

I do have another Great Wagon Road romance that keeps roiling around in my brain with characters that insist I write their story.

Why do you write the kind of books you do?

I’m a history nerd who enjoys researching and then subtly sharing historical tidbits in my writing so that my readers learn something without realizing it. I share faith elements the same way by showing that Christians endure tragedies and hardships, but rely on their faith to sort through and survive them. God lit a passion in me for writing at an early age, so anything I create, I do for His glory.

Where can readers find your books?

Amazon, Kindle, Barnes and Noble, Bookbub, Target, and Walmart, as well as some outlets/booksellers featured on Google

Social Media Links:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/susan.craft.108

X: @susanfcraft

Instagram: susanfcraftauthor

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/susanfc/ Pinterest

http://historicalfictionalightintime.blogspot.com (Historical Fiction a Light in Time)

http://colonialquills.blogspot.com (Colonial Quills)

http://stitchesthrutime.blogspot.com (Stitches Thru Time)

http://www.hhhistory.com (Heroes, Heroines and History)

https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7357343-susan-craft (Goodreads)