Where did the idea for
WINTER'S CHILD come from?
Without doubt, the most frequent question fielded by authors is what I call the
βidea question.β Iβve always liked the answer Willie Nelson gave when asked
where he got ideas for songs. Ideas are floating around in the universe, Willie
explained, and from time to time, one drops into his head.
But there is something more. Your head has to be ready. Ready, open and
welcoming. You have to be on the constant lookout for ideas. The mat must be
out: come on in, make yourself at home.
Because, as Willie says, ideas are indeed out there. Everywhere. And they are
looking for youβwriters, musicians, artists. The billboard you just passed, the
commercial interrupting your favorite show, the little old lady shuffling by in
the parking lot, the phone conversation annoying you in the airport.
And books, of course. Books are chock full of ideas. I have gotten ideas for
lots of stories from books. Often Iβve been doing research for the novel I
happened to be working on when, wow! An idea for the next book jumped off the page.
Thatβs how the idea for
WINTER'S CHILD came. I was
writing
WIFE OF MOON and
doing research about the Wind River Reservation in the early years after 1878,
when the Arapahos settled there. Tucked in a footnote I had almost overlooked
was the mention of Lizzie Brokenhorn, a white woman who had grown up Arapaho on
the reservation. Interesting, I thought. I made a note about Lizzie and filed
it into my ideas file (if you donβt capture ideas when they drop into your head,
they have a way of evaporating into the mists.) I finished
WIFE OF MOON, went on to
write other novels, and thought no more of Lizzie, until the idea popped up in
another book. This time, I paid close attention. I began to look into the
story of a white woman who had come into the tribe as a child.
The idea of such a child captured me. What if a white child were growing up on
the reservation today, I wondered? What if she believed herself to be Arapaho?
What if she had been brought to the reservation because of a horrific crime, a
crime the villain would stop at nothing, even murder, to keep secret.
And what if Vicky Holden, Arapaho attorney, and Father John OβMalley, Jesuit
missionary priest, were drawn into the mystery surrounding the white childβs
background and began to unravel the truth? What might the villain do to stop them?
I started writing, and the result is
WINTER'S CHILD, a novel
that sprang from the germ of an idea in an obscure footnote while I was
researching another novel. But you never know when an idea might present
itself. I have learned to be ready and to be patient because the idea for the
next novel is always on its way. It could drop into my head from anywhere.
Wind River
#20
Margaret Coelβs New York Times bestselling series continues as
Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden and Father John OβMalley discover that a
centuries-old mystery is tied to a modern-day crime on the Wind River
Reservationβ¦
In the midst of a blizzard, Myra and Eldon Little Shield found an abandoned
baby on their doorstep and brought her inside. Five years later, no one has come
back to claim the little girl now known as Mary Anne Little Shield. But now that
sheβs old enough to start school, her foster parents fear social services will
take herβa white childβaway from them.
Determined to adopt Mary Anne, the Little Shields hire lawyer Clint Hopkins,
who wants Vicky as cocounsel on the case. But before their meeting can take
place, a black truck deliberately runs Hopkins down in the street.
Enlisting Father John to help investigate who would kill to stop the childβs
adoption, Vicky unravels a connection between the five-year-old girl and a
missing alcoholic Arapaho wanted for robberyβonly to uncover one of the darkest
secrets in Wind Riverβs historyβ¦
Mystery Woman Sleuth
[Berkley Prime Crime, On Sale: September 5, 2017,
Mass Market Paperback / e-Book (reprint), ISBN: 9780425280331 / eISBN:
9780698191297]
Margaret Coel is the New York Times best-selling author of the
acclaimed Wind River mystery series set
among the Arapahos on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation and featuring
Jesuit priest Father John O'Malley and Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden.
She is a native Coloradan who hails from a pioneer Colorado family. The West β
the mountains, plains, and vast spaces β are in her bones, she says. She moved
out of Colorado on two occasions β to attend Marquette University and to spend a
couple of years in Alaska. Both times she couldn't wait to get back.
She writes in a small study in her home on a hillside in Boulder. The window
frames a view of the Rocky Mountains and the almost-always blue sky. A herd of
deer are usually grazing just outside, and one summer a couple of years ago, a
mountain lion made its home closeby.
"Every day,"she says, "I drink in the West."
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