This wonderful second novel of a trilogy about the German settlements in the Texas Hill Country concerns the tragic Civil War years, when an apparent majority turned its back on the old efforts to bring the proud but always-threatened and always-broke Republic of Texas into the Union. Texas was much smaller then but still had fewer slaves than most slave states, and author Celia Hayes contends that it was mainly the John Brown raid on Harper’s Ferry and subsequent rumors of possible slave insurrections that drove Texas into the Confederacy.
With the departure of so many of the state’s finest (including many Germans) to the battlefields of Tennessee and Virginia, the scoundrels took over the home front. Particularly in the hills where so many settlers more often spoke German than English and so were considered foreigners of dubious loyalty. Indeed many of them were Unionists, as a monument to some murdered ones, erected in Comfort in 1866, still attests. Tragedy likewise comes to Hayes’ main characters, the fictitious Becker and Steinmetz families, and we suffer along with them in the fulsome emotion her story has created in us.
This is old-fashioned story-telling at its best, and I was pleased to see many fewer typos and misspellings than in the first book. And I have bought the third one, the Harvest, and look forward to it. The old German towns of the hills, especially Fredericksburg, the principal place of the tale, are now major tourist attractions, something the old German burghers would have been pleased to know. It’s enriching to now have an emotional attachment to such as the old coffee-mill-style Verein’s Kirche (which still stands amidst the daily bustle on Main Street) thanks to Mrs. Hayes good writings.
THE TEXAS SCRIBBLER 
Well, I did promise that the typo quotient would go down, with the addition of two more editors! Glad you liked it – it IS very old-fashioned storytelling, which is fantastic – if that is your cuppa.
One caveat – the current Vereins-Kirche in Fredericksburg is a careful reconstruction. The original was demolished in the late 1800s, but reconstructed in 1935. The original sat in the dead middle of Main Street. Not much on Main Street remains from the time that I wrote about – there is more from the pre-Civil War days on the side streets.
I have to say, it is very odd for me to walk around Fredericksburg today – because I have a map in my head and a visual image that is quite at odds with what is there today. I am thinking, “Kiehne’s forge was here, and Hunter’s store was there, and Vati’s house was down that road a little, and Liesel and Hansi’s Sunday House was in the middle of this block of Creek Street.”
Enjoy Book Three, BTW – 500 pages and I never once used the term “cowboy.”
Heh. Believe it or not, at one point, about the 1880s or so, cowboys were called “cow tenders,” which isn’t at all romantic.
I knew the church was a reconstruction and that it was moved. My wife and I started going to F-burg B&B’s each spring back in the late 80s when much of the town still closed up after dark (few people on the streets), even on Saturdays. Much too crowded for us now but we still like to visit for the day now and then and it will seem an altogether different place to me from now on, thanks to you.
And thanks for stopping by.
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