Special Guest – Margaret Coel – Author of Winter’s Child – #Giveaway too! @BerkleyMystery

I am so excited to have Margaret Coel here for a visit today!

A Conversation with Margaret Coel on the latest Wind River mystery, Winter’s Child

(Post provided by publicist.)

Where do you get your ideas? Every author hears that question a lot. Out of the blue, is my answer. Writing a series means I am always waiting for an idea to drop out of the blue for the next Father John O’Malley/Vicky Holden adventure. The idea for Winter’s Child did just that a number of years ago when I stumbled across the photo of an Arapaho couple, taken about 1920. They wore traditional Arapaho clothing, headdresses and beaded necklaces, and stared poker-faced into the camera as if a camera wasn’t the most curious thing they had ever encountered.

An Arapaho couple, except that the woman wasn’t Arapaho. She was white. Married to an Arapaho man named John Brokenhorn and living on the Wind River Reservation.

Whoa! I said to myself. A white woman who had become Arapaho? How did that come about? This was the idea that eventually led to Winter’s Child.

What I found out about the woman was that she had been born Elizabeth Fletcher, the youngest child of a white family, who called her Lizzie. In 1865, the Fletcher family was crossing the plains when Cheyennes and Arapahos attacked their wagons and captured two-year-old Lizzie. From that moment her life changed into one her family could not have imagined. She grew up Cheyenne, but she married an Arapaho and began living with the Arapahos, eventually going with them to the Wind River Reservation. She became Arapaho.

The idea of a white-Arapaho never left me. A couple years ago, I started thinking again about Lizzie Brokenhorn and wondering what it must have been like for her to assume a new identity, become someone else. She may have been very young when she was captured, yet everyday she had to see the whiteness of her skin, the reddish blond color of her hair and know that she was different. She was someone else.

I started asking the what if questions: What if a white child appeared on the reservation today and became Arapaho? Where did this child come from? Who had brought her to the reservation and why? Where was her white family? Now that she identified as Arapaho, what would become of her? And the last what if question was this: what might two white girls who lived a century apart have in common?

The more I thought about the idea, the more I realized I had hit upon a mystery wrapped inside an enigma wrapped inside—well, another mystery. There were mysteries all around for Father John and Vicky to untangle, and plenty of reasons someone might not want them to succeed. In fact, might do whatever it took, including murder, to keep the secrets of the past hidden.

Not the least of the mysteries Father John and Vicky must confront is that of identity. Are we more than who we think we are? Do we create our identities, or do our identities create us? When we find ourselves in places or circumstances we had never planned, as is the case with both Father John and Vicky, how do we plot our way forward?

Big questions to ponder, but those are the kind of questions that draw Father John and Vicky into the story and keep them involved until they find the answers. The questions certainly kept me involved as I wrote the story—or rather, as the story seemed to unfold on its own—and I hope they will keep you involved as you go along on this adventure.

~Margaret

Winter’s Child (A Wind River Mystery)
Cozy Mystery
20th in Series
A Berkley Prime Crime Mystery (September 6, 2016)
An Imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Hardcover: 304 pages
ISBN-13: 978-0425280324
E-Book ASIN: B0191WS018

Margaret Coel’s New York Times bestselling series continues as Arapaho attorney Vicky Holden and Father John O’Malley discover that a centuries-old mystery is tied to a modern-day crime on the Wind River Reservation…

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 she’s old enough to start school, her foster parents fear social services will take her—a white child—away 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 child’s adoption, Vicky unravels a connection between the five-year-old girl and a missing alcoholic Arapaho wanted for robbery—only to uncover one of the darkest secrets in Wind River’s history…

Find out more about Margaret Coel and her books on her webpage here.

Click on covers for more book info or to purchase from Amazon.

Thanks to the publisher I have 1 copy to give away!
Contest is open to anyone over 18 years old
with a US or Canadian mailing address.

Duplicate entries will be deleted. Void where prohibited.

You do not have to be a follower to enter but I hope you will find
something you like here and become a follower.

Followers Will Receive 2 Bonus Entries For Each Way They Follow.
Plus 2 Bonus Entries For Liking My Facebook Fan Page.

Click the Like Button at the top of this post for a Bonus Entry.

Leave a comment for Margaret for 5 Bonus Entries.

Add this book to your WANT TO READ shelf on GoodReads for 3 Bonus Entries.

Pin this giveaway to Pinterest for 3 Bonus Entries.

If you publicize the giveaway on Twitter or Facebook or anywhere you will receive
5 Bonus Entries For Each Link.

Contest Will End October 8, 2016 at 11:59 PM CST
Winner Will Be Chosen By Random.org
Winner Will Be Notified By Email
and Will Be Posted Here In The Sidebar.

Click Here For Entry Form