I’m happy to welcome, author Amanda Cabot, to our blog today! Her novel, Waiting for Spring, is available now!!
One of the questions I’m often asked about books is why I chose a specific location and timeframe for the story. Although I often use fictional towns, I wanted real places for the Westward Winds books, and so I picked Fort Laramie for Summer of Promise and Cheyenne for the next two stories. Why Cheyenne? Besides the fact that I live here, it’s a city with an intriguing past.
In less than twenty years, Cheyenne went from a rough and tumble railroad town to become both the territorial capital and one of the wealthiest cities in the country. That wealth brought with it many of the amenities you’d expect, including an opera house that attracted the likes of Lily Langtry, streets lined with mansions, some of which boasted their own ballrooms, and electric lights for both homes and streets.
Though Cheyenne was founded as a railroad town and though the Union Pacific, along with the territorial government were major contributors to the city’s growth, much of the wealth came from cattle. Cattle ranching grew rapidly in Wyoming Territory, in part because of the open range. Who could resist the lure of free grazing? The result was an influx of ranchers and cattle companies, culminating in what was called the “Great Grass Bonanza” of 1876 to 1886. It was during that era that Cheyenne reached its pinnacle of wealth and influence, with cattle barons dominating the city’s social events. But all things end. Greed led to overgrazing, and a particularly brutal winter with massive herd losses caused many of the cattle barons to declare bankruptcy during the spring of 1887.
Depressing? Some might say so. I’m sure that if I’d lived in Cheyenne then, I would have been distressed by all the changes that the end of that first cattle era brought. But as an author 125 years later, I found that final year of immense wealth and prosperity intriguing enough to use it as the background for Waiting for Spring. And so you have it, a story set in Cheyenne in the fall of 1886.
Brief Bio
From the time that she was seven, Amanda Cabot dreamed of becoming a published author, but it was only when she set herself the goal of selling a book by her thirtieth birthday that the dream came true. A former director of Information Technology, Amanda has written everything from technical books and articles for IT professionals to mysteries for teenagers and romances for all ages. She’s delighted to now be a fulltime writer of Christian historical romances. Her Texas Dreams trilogy received critical acclaim, and Waiting for Spring, the second in her Westward Winds series, was just released.
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