Happy New Year!! Here we are in 2021! I am expecting God’s blessings in this new year!

I am excited to introduce you to my new, updated website and blog. This is truly a new re-beginning. I plan to be more faithful to blog about my writing projects and events that are happening in our family, community, and country. I pray my posts will honor the Lord, my Savior.

Therefore take no thought saying, What shall we eat? Or, What shall we drink? Or, wherewithal shall we be clothed?… For your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you. Matthew 6:31-33

2020 was an unusual year, to say the least. Almost all of our norms have been shaken to the core. In March we were inundated by an unknown virus called COVID 19. Everyone was required to stay-at-home for what seemed like an eternity. Schools were closed and students had to have virtual classes. Retirement homes closed to all visitors, even family members. The churches could not meet and had to have services on Facebook live or Zoom. The word of friends and family who had contacted the virus came in waves.

Eventually, restaurants and businesses were allowed to open with distancing requirements and masks. Thankfully, churches opened back up with strict limitations. Parents are scrambling to work their schedules around part-time virtual learning and school attendance as the schools try to comply with all the regulations. 

In spite of all these strange and often uncomfortable restrictions and mandates God’s name and His plans are still lifted up. In spite of churches being shut down, the message of Jesus Christ went out over social media like never before. We came to realize that the church is the people, not the building. We could still meet together even if it was virtual. The circumstances we are living through have given us an opportunity to share the Gospel and the love of Jesus even more to an uncertain world.

I am so thankful to know that God is bigger than all these seemingly overwhelming situations. He has it all in His hand and is still in control of it all. He knows what we have need of and He has promised to supply our needs. But He does require that we put Him first in all things. “But seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto you.” Matthew 6:33

Great Writing News My novella, “Inconvenient Love,” is in the final stages of editing and I hope to have it published before Valentine’s Day. It actually takes place between my first and second novels and is Tessa’s story. She was Elise’s roommate and friend in “Romance Along the Rails.” I finished the first draft while at the Women’s Get-Away Writer’s Retreat near Joplin, MO. last March right before the pandemic shutdown. What a great group of writer friends. They are so encouraging. I was having a difficult time with my next planned novel. One of my friends, Marty Knox, suggested I place it during the 1918 flu epidemic and WWI. Thank you for that inspiration, Marty! My next novel will be “Beauty from Ashes” and Rachel, who was Liz’s little sister in “Home for the Heart” is the main character.     The pictures below were actually taken at our March 2019 retreat. (I didn’t have any from 2020.) I hope we can meet again in March of 2021!

In a few days, I will be going the ACFW Writer’s Conference in Nashville, TN. The Lord has graciously opened many doors for me to go, not the least is giving me a friend, Kathy Brown Atwell to ride and to room with. I pray He will continue to help me prepare as I get ready to go. Also that He will work during the conference to show me His perfect will concerning my writing. I look forward to meeting many new friends and reconnecting with some I’ve known in the past.

Today, my son, Kelly, sent me the finished “One-page” for my contemporary novel, Harvest of Love. And I ordered bookmarks for the Harvey Girl Legacy Series. Things are coming together. It’s exciting!

My book “Home for the Heart” takes place in 1900. Daniel and Elise Gilbertson who were the main characters in “Romance Along the Rails” live in Topeka, KS with their family. Liz (Elizabeth) who was four-years-old in 1885 is now nineteen. She is trying to come to grips with her parent’s death and her own future plans. She wants to find out about her natural father’s family.

With the Harvey Houses, many of the original frame buildings were being replaced by large beautiful buildings with hotels.  The Castaneda in Las Vegas, NM was built in 1899; the Arcade in Newton, KS in 1900; the El Vaquero in Dodge City, KS in 1900. Many others were built between 1900 and 1910. The Bisonte in Hutchinson, KS was built as a tribute from his sons to Fred Harvey, who died in 1901. It was built in the English Tudor style and was opened in 1906. Previous to that the Santa Fe Hotel in Hutchinson was the Harvey House. As you read “Home for the Heart” you will recognize some of these historic places. Several are being renovated now and are made into museums.

The Automobile was beginning to gain popularity, although there was a lot of resistance. Many thought it was a passing fad, that horses were more dependable. The automobile was not mass produced until around 1913.

1900 was a Presidential election year. Republican William McKinley was running for reelection with Theodore Roosevelt as his running mate. And Williams Jennings Bryan was the Democrat candidate. McKinley was reelected but was assassinated in September 1901. He was succeeded by Roosevelt. 

I have been working hard on my next book, “Home For the Heart.” It takes place in 1900. The main character is nineteen-year-old, Liz Gilbertson. If you have read my first book “Romance Along the Rails”, you will recognize Liz as four-year-old, Elizabeth Tilman. Elizabeth was orphaned when her parents were killed in a carriage accident. She now lives with Daniel and Elise Gilbertson, her uncle and aunt who have taken her to be their daughter along with their own children, Adam, Julien, and Rachel. Elise loves her adopted family yearns to learn about her birth father’s family. She has also recently been jilted by her fiance.

Michael Brannon arrives from Boston, to work as Daniel’s accountant at the AT&SF Offices in Topeka. He is attracted to Liz, but she’s not ready for a new relationship.

Liz is restless and decides to become a Harvey Girl to refocus and redefine her future.

If you haven’t had the opportunity to read, “Romance Along the Rails. You can order it at  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0791M6LCT   or  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/romance-along-the-rails-joyce-valdois-smith/1127983812?ean=9780999762608

How the Harvey Girls Won the West

Fred Harvey opened the first Harvey House in Topeka, KS in 1876. For the first few years, men worked for him as waiters. The Harvey Girls joined Fred Harvey’s empire along the Santa Fe in 1883. The first waitresses were hired in Raton, New Mexico, when Harvey fired all of his waiters because of poor service. Fred Harvey decided to hire young women to work as waitresses. These waitresses were the first respectable women many of the cowboys had ever seen, aside from their wives or mothers.

Harvey’s new waitresses were so popular in the community and among railroad passengers and employees that he decided to replace all the waitresses on the line. Harvey advertised in midwestern and eastern newspapers and women’s magazines for “young women 18 to 30 years of age, of good character, attractive and intelligent,” to go west to work. Skeptics said the kind of women Harvey wanted would not work for him, but they did.

The women who answered his ads did so for many and varied reasons–economic considerations were the most prevalent, but adventure, a change of scene, and life in a new territory were also factors in young women’s decisions to join Harvey in the West. With the regimentation of an army boot camp, Harvey initiated the Harvey Girls into service along the railroad. Harvey had no shortage of applicants–thousands of women applied and were accepted every year from 1883 until the 1950’s.

There were great variations and many exceptions to Harvey’s rules over the years, but the women who were Harvey Girls were consistently good workers who charmed and impressed passengers on the Santa Fe for three-quarters of a century.           —The Harvey Girls-Women Who Opened the West    by Lesley Poling-Kempes

I want to thank my son-in-law, Erik, for helping me update my website and increase my media presence. Also thanks to my friend, Ginny, for her critiquing skills. I have been writing and editing “Home for the Heart”. 

I will be attending a writer’s conference in the middle of September and need to be able to describe my story to an editor or an agent. This is best described as an “elevator pitch”. It needs to be concise enough to share in the elevator. I would like your help today. Please let me know if this blurb would catch your imagination and encourage you to read my next novel, “Home for the Heart”.

Orphaned and recently jilted, Liz Gilbertson yearns to contact her birth father’s family but encounters dead ends at every turn. Michael Brannon, her adopted father’s new accountant, is attracted to Liz, but she’s not ready to begin a new relationship. She becomes a Harvey Girl to redefine her future.  

Did you know,  Harvey Houses were the first interstate restaurant chain in America. In 1876, Fred Harvey opened the first Harvey House in the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe depot at Topeka, KS. In 1878 a Harvey House with a hotel was open for business in Florence, KS. By the late 1880’s, they spread along the ATSF railroad line approximately 100 miles apart; from Chicago to California and to the Gulf of Mexico. 

In the day when eating establishments along the railroad had a less than sterling reputation, Fred Harvey, the owner and president of his company, demanded perfection in the Harvey House dining rooms and lunchrooms. He used fine linen tablecloths, sterling silverware, and imported crystal goblets. Fresh food was transported on the railroad so there would be gourmet meals all along the line. He placed ads in eastern newspapers for “young women 18 to 30 years of age, of good character, attractive and intelligent,” to go west to work. The Harvey Girl had to agree to abide by strict employee rules, live in dormitories, accept whatever location was assigned to her and abstain from marriage for the duration of her contract.

The Cracker Barrel restaurant chain along the Interstates today, remind me of the early Harvey Houses. Each one is set up the same, their menus are identical from one Cracker Barrel to the next, and in our experience, we receive efficient, courteous service and delicious food each time we stop.

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