[3] Virgil Pringle, in Overland in 1846: Diaries and Letters of the California-Oregon Trail, vol. 1, ed. Dale Morgan (Lincoln, NE: Bison Books, 1963).
[4] William Emerson, The Applegate Trail of 1846: A Documentary Guide to the Original Southern Emigrant Route to Oregon (Ashland, OR: Ember Enterprises, 1996).
[5] Charles George Davis, Scott-Applegate Trail, 1846–1847: Atlas and Gazetteer (New Plains, OR: Soap Creek Enterprises, 1996).
[6] Levi Scott and James Layton Collins, Wagons to the Willamette: Captain Levi Scott and the Southern Route to Oregon, 1844–1847, ed. Stafford J. Hazelett [descendant of Sarelia Pringle Northrup] (Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press, 2015).
[7] Rinker Buck, The Oregon Trail: A New American Journey (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2015).
[8] Carolyn M. Buan, A Changing Mission: The Story of a Pioneer Church (Forest Grove, OR: United Church of Christ [Congregational] of Forest Grove, 1995).
[9] Dixon Ford and Lee Kreutzer, “Oxen, Engines of the Overland Emigration,” Overland Journal, vol. 33, no. 1 (Spring 2015).
[10] Catherine Sager Pringle, Across the Plains in 1844, published in part in S. A. Clarke, Pioneer Days of Oregon History, vol. 2 (Portland, OR: J. K. Gill Co., 1905).
[11] To read Tabby’s letter known as “A Heroine’s Letter” about a portion of her journey through the Umpqua and Calapooia Mountains in 1846, visit the Schlesinger Library online at Radcliff College. What the library has for Tabitha Moffett Brown is both small and entirely available to view online. The digitized collection is available for you to view at this link: http://pds.lib.harvard.edu/pds /view/9748870.
Author Interview
Question: This Road We Traveled is your twenty-ninth book and the twenty-fifth historical novel based on the lives of actual people or events. What attracts you to little-known historical women?
Jane: Women’s history is so often lost. Exploring the why and how one might have felt about what one accomplished or failed to do is often lost to the biographer. Those explorations become the realm of fiction, where one seeks truth in story, truths often more revealing than the facts uncovered. It’s that part of the history that intrigues me, that and giving voice to voices seldom heard and helping memorialize women’s stories that might otherwise be lost.
Question: Did Virgilia really have the encounter with the snake? What about Pherne finding the furniture?
Jane: Fully products of my imagination. A novelist needs events to help carve a character’s personality. As I had so little information about either Pherne or Virgilia, I wanted some symbols of the things that held them back. For Pherne, it became the loss of things, her guilt, and hanging on to the past with Oliver’s death, which was an actual family loss. For Virgilia, her challenge was the future and her fears of what might happen ahead, whether she’d be strong enough, compassionate enough, and lovable enough. What is true is that Pherne and Virgil lived a long life together in Salem. There are creeks and parks named for them. And Pherne did give birth a few years after their arrival in Oregon, so I believe she let go of the past. Virgilia did marry Fabritus; she did give birth to Virgil and other sons and daughters too. That they each survived the ordeal of the cutoff—which wasn’t fiction—suggests their stalwart natures worthy of remembering.
Question: You mentioned breaking your foot in the midst of writing this story. How did that affect the story line?
Jane: It made me more aware of how difficult Tabby’s journey would have been. Lame, always needing a walking stick, using John’s cane to help him mount when he became weakened on the trail, and the fatigue that hovers over a broken limb or lameness all made me more sympathetic to her. And admire her more as well.
Question: Did you know when you started researching that you’d find the linkage to Letitia Carson (A Light in the Wilderness) and Eliza Spalding Warren (The Memory Weaver)?
Jane: I made the discovery of Eliza’s connection when I first started researching Tabby’s story, and the crossing of Soap Creek was mentioned in Virgil’s diary. That mention offered a chance for the weary travelers to have a bite of cheese that Letitia might have made. Discovering that Eliza Spalding and Tabby very likely met seemed too good not to include. Catherine Sager found a natural place in the story line drawn from The Memory Weaver woven right into Tabby’s family.
Question: Are you working on something else?
Jane: Always! The next book is the story of one of Oregon’s first medical school graduates from Willamette University, Jane Parrish, known as Jennie. Her husband carries a familiar name in Oregon history, but Jennie does not. She was married and the mother of three when she decided to go to medical school. That must have been an interesting family discussion! I hope it’ll be another inspiring story of a strong woman. And then there are a couple more women who have raised their hands and said, “Choose me!” I’m so fortunate that I get to spend time with amazing women, and then when the books come out, amazing readers populate my “spent light.” I’m blessed.
Join Jane’s Story Sparks newsletter at www.jkbooks.com to keep up with her writing life and schedule and be inspired by encouraging words. Requests for speaking engagements can be made at her website as well.
Reader Group
Discussion Questions
1. The author set out to provide evidence for Tabitha Moffat Brown being named the Mother of Oregon, representing the “distinctive pioneer heritage and the charitable and compassionate nature of Oregon’s people.” Did the author accomplish her goal? Why or why not?
2. Tabby chose to head her memoir entries as either “Feet or Wings” or “Go or Stay.” What do these titles have in common, or do they have anything in common?
3. Pherne was attached to her things. Have you ever found yourself uprooted and forced to “downsize” or leave treasures behind? What strategies did you use to manage the challenge? What did Pherne use to endure? What helped turn your hopes to the future instead of the past?
4. Virgilia wears herself out trying to “take care of people.” Do you know people who may well be addicted to rescuing? How did Virgilia discover how to use her gift of compassion and generosity without maiming herself or others?
5. Was it a mistake for Virgil and Tabby’s party to take the Applegate cutoff rather than follow Orus down the Columbia? What did they learn about themselves having made that decision? What lessons did they miss?
6. What did Nellie Louise’s comment that she was a “forged” orphan mean for her? Does that term have meaning for those of us separated from those we love because of misunderstandings, arguments, anger? Is it possible for the Nellie Louises of the world to be restored to positive life attitudes despite never physically reconciling with their losses? How might that forgiveness happen? How did it occur for Nellie Louise? For Judson? For Pherne?
7. Virgilia’s poem “No One Knows” muses about the randomness of life events: accidents, deaths, losses. And she wonders if she’ll ever see her gramo again in this life. Does “no one knows” apply to other aspects of the lives of these Oregon Trail emigrants? To our lives? How do you live with the uncertainty and fear that is the everyday?
8. What do you think was Tabby’s greatest challenge? Tell a story of a time when you faced a challenge. What helped you endure? What helped Tabby survive?
9. This is a story not only of one woman’s resilience in her years of “spent light” but of family relationships. Did the author succeed in filling in the missing answers of why Tabby never lived with her sons or daughter (until a few months before her death)? What does it mean to “not be a burden” in our culture? Does allowing others to help us put us on the same plane instead of above others, as Orus suggested to his mother? Why or why not?
10. It’s said that “generosity changes everything.” How did generous acts in this story change the lives of these characters and contribute to the settlement of Oregon Territory? How does generosity expand any community? Tell a story of how generosity has affected your life.
Jan
e Kirkpatrick is the New York Times and CBA bestselling author of more than twenty-nine books, including A Sweetness to the Soul, which won the prestigious Wrangler Award from the Western Heritage Center. Her works have sold over a million copies and have been finalists for the Christy Award, Spur Award, Oregon Book Award, and Reader’s Choice awards, and have won the WILLA Literary Award three times and Carol Award for Best Christian Historical Fiction. Many of her titles have been Book of the Month and Literary Guild selections. A mental health professional, Jane worked for seventeen years on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Oregon. You can also read her work in more than fifty publications, including Decision, Private Pilot, and Daily Guideposts. Jane speaks around the world on the power of stories in our lives. She lives in Central Oregon with her husband, Jerry, and two dogs. No chickens. Learn more at www.jkbooks.com.
Also by Jane Kirkpatrick
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A Light in the Wilderness
The Memory Weaver
and 25 other titles
Jane Kirkpatrick, This Road We Traveled
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