Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Early Efforts: Casey’s Cow

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I actually began writing Westerns quite early in life. One of my surviving childhood manuscripts, titled Casey’s Cow, could probably be termed my first. I don’t recall exactly how old I was when I wrote it, but based on the age of the heroine, and the fact that I remember typing it on our big old Gateway desktop computer, I’m guessing I was around ten. This was the era when—likely influenced by a diet of American Girl books—I was convinced that fictional ten-year-old girls could save the day in any situation. The first lines ran thus:

It was sunrise at Lenisor Ranch. The sun cast a golden glow over the corrals and stables. The big white house was nearly hidden by trees, but some of the sun’s magic reached the glittering glass windowpanes. And now in the distance noises. Hundreds of hooves trampling. And cows bawling.

Ten-year-old Casey Lenisor, still half asleep, rolled over in bed. Suddenly she was wide awake. She ran to the window and peered into the distance. Yes! Her uncle’s cattle drive was returning!

I was also evidently convinced that short sentences equaled drama. Much drama.

Reading back over Casey’s Cow in recent years, I was actually rather surprised by the decent command of language I had at age ten. Reading Dickens at a young age must have helped. There aren’t any laughably terrible spelling or grammar errors; it’s the plot and characters, and more particularly the author’s calm assumption that it’s all perfectly realistic, that make the manuscript hilarious.

Anyhow, Casey lived on her uncle’s Montana ranch along with her mother and younger siblings; her father, for reasons unfathomable, was off driving stagecoaches for the Butterfield Overland Mail Company. (“I wish I could stay to help Dan brand the new calves, but I must go,” he had said.) Over the course of the four chapters that are extant—I think that’s as far as I got—Casey acquired a pet calf named Vermilion, which of course she roped and branded herself; befriended a (very) young cowboy from her uncle’s outfit; fended off the attack of a panther; and wished for something unusual to happen. In the fourth chapter the bank was robbed, evidently fulfilling her wish.

“The bank?” exclaimed Casey in disbelief. The bank, indeed! The building in question was built of strong logs, and to Casey’s mind, impenetrable (except when you walked in the door).

The manuscript ends with Casey heading off to find the architect who designed the bank to ask him whether there was a secret passage. As nearly as I can recall, the remainder of the story was intended to be occupied by detective work, and would end with Casey solving the mystery of the bank robbery, assisted in some important way at the climax by her calf.

Did I mention it was also meant to be the first in a series? There’s fragments of a few other stories in my folder of childhood efforts, and Casey’s Cow, in spite of its unfinished state, included an optimistic list of future titles (Casey’s Journey, Casey Earns Her Way, Casey Back East, Casey at Sea, and so forth).

I suppose in the long run, we may be glad that the rest of Casey’s Cow is lost to history. It does have its positives, of course: it shows me how much I’ve learned in the fifteen years since. For instance, that cattle drives don’t return to the home ranch, with newborn calves in tow; and that maple trees are not a notable feature of the Montana landscape. And it’s good for an occasional hearty laugh.

The Life of Stories

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My upcoming Western short story collection, Wanderlust Creek and Other Stories, now has a Goodreads page (in case you’d like to mark it to-read), with a book description (in case you want to know what it’s about), and a semi-official release goal: I’m aiming for March. There’ll be pre-orders at some point, of course; I’ll let you know when that happens.

There’ll be six stories in this collection:

  • “Single-Handed”

  • “The Rush at Mattie Arnold’s”

  • “A Search For Truth”

  • “The Mustanger’s Bride”

  • “Room Service”

  • “Wanderlust Creek”

Like Left-Hand Kelly, this book has been a long time brewing. The origins of half these stories go all the way back to before I published my very first book in the autumn of 2011. Yet it’s funny, looking back over my notes and first drafts, how different the life of the project was for each one. “Single-Handed” and “Room Service,” for instance, were both begun in 2011, and worked on periodically with gaps of months and even years in between, until I finally finished both in a feverish week-long burst of writing last July.

“The Rush at Mattie Arnold’s,” on the other hand, was an idea that came to me unexpectedly and got dashed off in just two or three days. It was some of the most fun I’ve had writing and one of the easiest stories to write. “The Mustanger’s Bride” was also great fun and was written in a spurt of a few days…except there was a gap of five months in the middle of the spurt.

I don’t have many outstanding memories of the composition process for “A Search For Truth,” but I do remember editing: it’s the story where I just kept on cutting out words. No plot changes, just heaps  and heaps of excess words that puzzled me with how in the world they got there in the first place. I have a feeling a few more will end up getting the boot in the final edit-and-proofread stage, too.

“Wanderlust Creek,” which is one of my favorites among my own stories, was a long time in development before it actually made it to the page. For several years I slowly accumulated pages of notes in one of my favorite note-taking notebooks, gradually putting scenes in order and straightening out a tangle of ideas for the climax. I think I had the subconscious feeling all along that I was waiting until I felt ready to do the idea justice—and I am glad I waited. I finally sat down to write it last summer and finished it over the course of a couple months.

But by hook or crook, by the long route or the short one, all six eventually made their way to the triumphant finish line of THE END, and by the end of this month, should have undergone their final edits and been fitted between the covers of a proof copy. And you know, I’m getting a bit excited.

In the Footsteps of Molly Wood

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When I read Owen Wister’s famed Western novel The Virginian a couple of years ago, I was, ironically enough, particularly delighted by a few passages taking place in the East. Several chapters dealing with Wister’s New England-born heroine Molly Wood casually drop the names of half a dozen places in Vermont and New York that I’m very familiar with in real life. It’s delightfully strange to find mentions like that in the pages of a classic novel, especially of places that are smaller and not well known outside the area. I thought it would be fun to go on a photographic scavenger hunt of these locations, so readers who might know plenty about what Wyoming looks like could also get a glimpse of what Wister’s Molly came from when she set forth to teach school in the West—or at least what it looks like today.

Bennington

Miss Mary Stark Wood of Bennington, Vermont…could have been enrolled in the Boston Tea Party, the Ethan Allen Ticonderogas, the Green Mountain Daughters, the Saratoga Sacred Circle, and the Confederated Colonial Chatelaines. She traced direct descent from the historic lady whose name she bore, that Molly Stark who was not a widow after the battle where her lord, her Captain John, battled so bravely as to send his name thrilling down through the blood of generations of schoolboys.

Molly’s hometown of Bennington was the site of the Colonial storehouses that the British sent a detachment to capture just prior to the Battle of Saratoga in 1777. The actual Battle of Bennington was fought near Hoosick on the New York side of the line, but it is here at Bennington that the monument commemorating the battle stands, along with a statue of Brigadier General John Stark.


Monument Avenue is lined with beautiful old houses, most of which bear plaques with 18th-century dates and the names of notable people who once lived there. A statue marks the location of the Catamount Tavern, which served as headquarters for Stark and for Ethan Allen’s Green Mountain Boys, and a little further on is the beautiful Old First Church, where poet Robert Frost is buried in the lovely old cemetery.

Mount Anthony


On a visit back East, Molly is taken for a drive to see the home sights by her Eastern suitor—though there are hints that Molly’s heart is evidently elsewhere:

…While they drove up the valley of the little Hoosic: “I had forgotten it was so nice and lonely. But after all, no woods are so interesting as those where you might possibly see a bear or an elk.” And upon another occasion, after a cry of enthusiasm at the view from the top of Mount Anthony, “It’s lovely, lovely, lovely,” she said, with diminishing cadence, ending in pensiveness once more. “Do you see that little bit just there? No, not where the trees are—that bare spot that looks brown and warm in the sun. With a little sagebrush, that spot would look something like a place I know on Bear Creek. Only of course you don’t get the clear air here.”

I had never been up Mount Anthony before this weekend. Though we were unable to reach the summit, which is only accessed by what is now a private road, the narrow dirt road winding around the side of the mountain, through colorful woods and past hidden farms tucked deep in the hills, was unbelievably beautiful. Above is the peak of Mount Anthony taken from below, and this is a view from the far side of the mountain:


An old chimney beside the road up on the side of the mountain, marking the site of a house long gone. I felt like we were up on Walton’s Mountain.

Hoosic Junction & Eagle Bridge

At Hoosic Junction, which came soon, she passed the up-train bound back to her home, and seeing the engineer and the conductor,—faces that she knew well,—her courage nearly failed her, and she shut her eyes against this glimpse of the familiar things that she was leaving. To keep herself steady she gripped tightly a little bunch of flowers in her hand.

But something caused her eyes to open; and there before her stood Sam Bannett, asking if he might accompany her so far as Rotterdam Junction.

“No!” she told him with a severity born from the struggle she was making with her grief. “Not a mile with me. Not to Eagle Bridge. Good-by.”

I found this little railroad crossing, with a bridge over the Walloomsac River in the background, not far from the location of Hoosic Junction. The junction itself, where the railroad tracks coming from Bennington join another line heading west toward Rotterdam, is hidden back in the woods after the nearest road stops at a dead end.


And at Eagle Bridge, less than five miles from Hoosic Junction, I made my most exciting discovery of the day: the old abandoned railway depot! I’d driven past this place many times (the main road runs parallel with the tracks, off to the left of this shot) but never even noticed the old building tucked behind the trees.


The railroad from Rutland, Vermont to Eagle Bridge, New York was originally built in 1851 by the Rutland and Washington Railroad. By 1870 it was a part of the Rensselaer and Saratoga Railroad, which was leased by the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. If you look at this 1886 map of the D&H railroads, you can see the Eagle Bridge station prominently marked just east of the larger cities of Schenectady and Saratoga.

I had to wonder—was this the same building that stood here in the 1880s, at the time The Virginian is set? One can imagine it as a bustling little village station, with timetables chalked up by the ticket window, telegraph machine clicking away inside and passengers waiting on the platform—the center of the town, just across the road from a cluster of buildings that included a small brick hotel. I wonder if any real-life New England girl, excited, frightened, and watching familiar homelike scenes slip behind her as the engine picked up speed, passed through here on a westbound train, headed for unknown adventures in the wild West.