Kat's Dilemma

Kat’s Dilemma is a work of fiction. Created out of bits and pieces of research into the social and cultural challenges encountered by women and men in America at the turn of last century. Only two of the characters are based on real life people in the history of my family. Katherine Gehm was my great grandmother. Some of the known family incidents and resulting emotions are reflected in the character Kat.

Johann Wuenderlich was a young German Lutheran who immigrated to the US, converted to Methodism, and returned to Germany to introduce and spread that Christian sect. A memoir of his experience came into my possession, was translated by my daughters, and provides the basis of some of that character’s words and actions.

The US Constitution and Bill of Rights were meant as a foundation of government for all American citizens. But, the men and women of that era (and ours), influenced by societal norms or religious dictates, have never fully understood its real meaning. Therein lies the promise and the struggle between principle and prejudice in Kat’s Dilemma.

Inevitable Consequences?

In the aftermath of the Mexican-American War, the Espinosa brothers are enraged by the mistreatment of Mexican Nationals in the newly acquired American territories. They embark on a rampage spanning vast distances through northern New Mexico and southern Colorado, killing and robbing American men. Tom Tobin, a skilled hunter, occasional army scout, rancher, and seasoned Indian fighter, is tasked by the commander of Fort Garland to track down the Espinosas.

This gripping story delves into Tobin’s history and exploits, while also depicting the events and circumstances that shaped the Espinosas’ lives. The acquisition of the Southwest through the U.S.-instigated war with Mexico forever changed the lives of the Mexicans who had called those lands home for generations.

As Tobin pursues the notorious brothers across the rugged frontier, readers are taken on a thrilling journey through a tumultuous period in American history, exploring the complexities of the Mexican-American War and its impact on the people caught in its wake.

In Hugger Mugger

In Hugger Mugger tells the story of two women, one a member of the nobility and one a commoner who are both constrained by their sex and position to live the lives they want. They are forced to hide, to lie and to suffer in order to survive under the English laws.

Mary Sidney, a noblewoman, vows to write the greatest works in the English language, to fulfil the ambition of her deceased brother, but she must use trickery and deceit to have her writings published. Sarah Burton, a commoner, scarred by a nobleman, uses her intellect to outfox the Crown.

After a chance meeting, the women form a friendship that enables them to get what they desire most.

Guardian Guerrillas

This is the fascinating story of Frank James, Jesse James older brother, as a bushwhacker in Quantrill’s Partisan Rangers during the Civil War. The actions of this brash, Shakespeare quoting young man represents the best and worst of guerrilla warfare in those turbulent and violent times.

After fighting as a Confederate soldier at Wilson’s Creek, captured and paroled, he returned home as a cocky nineteen-year-old barely staying out of jail. He joins Quantrill’s bushwhackers with escapades that are full of daring and bravery, sometimes cruelty, but also with humour.

We follow him through the many skirmishes and battles including the raids on Lawrence Kansas and Centralia Missouri and the critical events that precipitated them, the women’s prison collapse where several bushwhacker relatives were killed or injured and the infamous “General Order Number 11” that forcibly drove out all residents of an area over 2,200 square miles, twice the size of Rhode Island.

The characters in this work include soldiers, generals, politicians, crooks, thieves, farmers, bankers, lovers, wives, and sisters that suffered or caused suffering in this oft untold American history and their post bellum lives that were fraught with danger, excitement, success for some, failure for many, with ironic, karmic twists.

What drove these young men to become Jayhawkers and Bushwhackers? Were they blood thirsty cutthroats or Guardian Guerrillas?

Government Girls

It’s 1942, and best friends Mary and Marge leave their teaching jobs behind in Iowa to move to Washington D.C. to work for the FBI. Excited yet apprehensive, neither of them could anticipate the rapid changes the war will bring into their lives.

Arriving at Union Station, they meet Dotty, a quick-witted woman who left her all-girl band in New York City in search of new opportunities. Despite rampant racism, Dotty manages to find a clerical job with the government, thanks to her prized possession - a typewriter.

The three women band together, renting rooms in a run-down mansion that operates as a restaurant and boarding house. Under the same roof lives Natalie, an eccentric artist trying desperately to sell her screenplays and achieve her Hollywood dreams.

As Mary and Marge begin their demanding fingerprint filing jobs at the FBI, they find themselves growing increasingly vulnerable, but also courageous, in the face of a world ruptured by war. The four women couldn’t be more different, yet they forge an unbreakable bond confronting rapidly shifting social conventions and opportunities for women.

Gone but Not Forsaken

Gone but Not Forsaken is the second of a historical fiction trilogy set in America and Europe from 1918-1945. It chronicles post World War I through the end of World War II. In America, it portrays initial abundance, including modern industrialism, where Gilded Age mansions were replaced by soaring skyscrapers through the roaring twenties into the stock market crash and Great Depression. It parallels the birth of Hollywood glitz amidst the storm of the country's depravation, carried through the bombing of Pearl Harbor and World War II. In Europe, it chronicles the birth of Nazism, the Holocaust, and the rise and fall of the Third Reich. American victory is heralded in the end once again. The novel continues to chronicle the stories of the Champions, the Wagners and the Sterns, along with the intertwining of their lives. It will be followed by book three of the trilogy, spanning 1945-2000.

Gone but Not Forgotten

Gone but Not Forgotten is the first of a historical fiction trilogy set in America and Europe from 1914 to 1918. It chronicles the tale of the Gilded Age of pageantry through the end of the Great War. It is the story of the Champions, the Wagners and the Sterns, an epical saga of their lives, trials, and tribulations. The story opens at an outdoor wedding in fashionable Newport, Rhode Island. The heroines are beautiful twin sisters, Veda and Rose Champion. Veda is the spoiled American debutante with an iron will. Rose is the gentler beauty and is passively strong.

Hans Wagner, the male protagonist, is a German immigrant who comes to America with the quest to live his dream. His best Jewish friend, Rudolph Stern, also arrives from Germany to study medicine. The toils of the Great War halt the hopes of both while ushering in a series of tragedies for the Champion family, including the sinking of the Lusitania, the death of the twins’ brother, Marius Champion, on the battlefields of France, and the vicious murder of their grandparents in Verdon.

The novel will be followed by two others, spanning 1918–2000. The trilogy is a portrait of the most significant events in the twentieth century.

Gone But Not Betrayed

Gone But Not Betrayed caps the epic ‘Gone But Not Forgotten’ trilogy, chronicling three intertwined families across the breathtaking upheavals of the 20th century’s second half.

Picking up in 1945’s ashes, this majestic saga ushers us into the postwar hope, tragedy, and turbulence that reinvented the modern world order. As the Champions, Wagners and Sterns journey from the Holocaust’s horrors to Israel’s birth, through Hollywood’s Golden Age, Vietnam turmoil and beyond, Hans Wagner quietly amasses an empire in America’s corridors of power. But shadowy forces conspire to imperil everything he holds dear.

At the story’s heart are identical twins Veda and Rose, whose paths diverge into legend after the war. While Veda’s dynasty embodies the glittering pinnacle of American success, Rose’s quiet courage leaves an indelible impact from Auschwitz to Israel’s Six Day War. Though oceans apart, each sister’s light has transformed innumerable lives. Despite the riches and fame fortune brings them, this indestructible bond remains unchanged.

Spanning the nostalgic charm of postwar suburbia to the encroaching millennium’s anxious technologies, Gone But Not Betrayed fuses intimate personal dramas with the pivotal events reshaping global civilization. As new generations inherit unresolved darkness and light, every hard-won revelation immerses us deeply into the unbroken chain linking past to future.

Furs and Fevers

Don’t mistake this for dry history! Lynn MacKaben Brown’s Furs and Fevers offers the reader a view into a long lost and mostly forgotten world—a world where Indigenous tribes interact with French-Canadian trappers and traders, while their way of life is unravelling under the pressure of American expansion into Indiana. The characters are historical, and their interactions follow the historical records available thanks to Brown’s exhaustive research.

The author has a gift for placing believable and compelling words in the mouths of those long dead and weaving it all into a story that keeps the reader entranced. Along the way, without noticing, that reader receives an education into the systems and politics of Indiana and the frontier in the early part of the 19th century.

There is plenty within these pages to challenge you, and controversial actions that leap out of their hoary context and force you to contend with your contemporary judgements and worldview. The past has dilemmas that can still cause debate today.

“Furs and Fevers is a compelling, enjoyable, and highly enlightening read that I envy you the initial discovery experience that is now, sadly in my rear-view mirror. Savor it!”

Brian Hogan, direct descendent of Dominique Rousseau.

“Lynn enthusiastically embraces the concept of history as a story. She combines bulldog determination to unearth truth with her interpretation of events. Then she re-creates the multicultural, time-honored role of tribal historian/storyteller. And who doesn’t love a good story?”

Sigmund Brouwer, author of The Last Temple.

From Infamy to Hope

Told in the compelling voice of Rachel Moore, a housemaid in 17th century Puritan Boston and featuring that colony’s two most powerful figures in Governor John Winthrop and his courageous opponent Anne Hutchinson, From Infamy to Hope is the story of the religious persecution of a servant girl made pregnant by rape. Convicted of fornication, she is sentenced to wear a black W for “whore” on her gown. Over the opposition of Hutchinson, the colony heads into war with the Pequot Indians. Rachel masquerades as a boy soldier, hoping to recover her baby who was sold to the Pequots by her alcoholic father to satisfy a debt.

She is at the war’s final battle when the colonial army burns down the Pequot’s fortified village in Mystic, Connecticut. Will she find her baby among the ashes?

Although Hutchinson was ultimately excommunicated and banished, a statue in her honor now stands before the State House in Boston, and a parkway bears her name in New York near where she died in another Indian war. Her descendants include F.D.R., the Bushes, as well as Mitt Romney. The present day Pequots now run Foxwood Casino near the site of the massacre in Connecticut.

Disasters at Sea

In October 1851, the bustling harbors of Gloucester, Massachusetts marked the onset of a promising venture as the American fishing fleet set sail towards the bountiful mackerel run in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence. However, as they neared the waters off Prince Edward Island, Canada, an unanticipated hurricane engulfed them in a tempest of terror and despair, obliterating over 200 schooners and vessels. The calamity claimed the lives of over 100 seamen, a tragic toll that resonated across the waves.

Disasters at Sea unveils the poignant yet inspiring chronicle of the Prince Edward Island residents, who, propelled by compassion, rallied to extend a lifeline to the beleaguered seamen. Their unwavering aid echoed the noble deeds of the Newfoundland residents during the 9/11 crisis. With hearts brimming with empathy, they embarked on a mission of rescue, recovery, and honor for the fallen, manifesting an enduring maritime bond.

This narrative reflects on the ethos of neighborly duty prevalent in the 19th-century Maritime Canada, highlighting a stark contrast against the seemingly indifferent response of the vessel owners in the aftermath, who appeared to evade accountability for the lost souls and shattered vessels. Disasters at Sea navigates through the haunting whys of fate’s discernment amidst the storm, unearthing the profound human spirit that surges even amidst the darkest squalls, painting a timeless tableau of maritime valor and human resilience.

Deseret: A Defense and a Refuge

In this tale, people scattered throughout the world are woven together in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains. Forty years after Napoleon’s defeat, the development of modern warfare on the Crimean Peninsula sends reverberations across the globe, alerting all of the growth in technology, the precursor of the US Civil War in weapons and tactics, as well as the needs of multitudes of dispossessed and underrepresented. The shrinking planet is growing crowded. The bumping into one another becomes increasingly violent. Women and men stand to be counted, molded of numerous talents and abilities, striving for relief and equality, demanding rights and opportunity. Slavery, reservations, women’s suffrage, polygamy, and Manifest Destiny are swirled into the murky vat of the United States. Protesting members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, known derisively as Mormons, are challenged over religious freedom. Despite the continued criticism heaped upon them for their unique doctrines, missionary work and its effects spread throughout the nation and the earth.

The 1850s see the homeland of Deseret plowing against Bloody Kansas, Buchannan’s Blunder, Mountain Meadows, the Sevastopol Policy, the Pony Express, and the Transcontinental Telegraph. These ventures combine with similar troubles and shove the nation into the red-hot furnace of civil war.