Karen Schutte
An award-winning author of historical novels inspired by the stories of her ancestors.
A Far Place
The second book in a new paternal series!
1894: Germantown, Nebraska: John and Mary Westerhoff Wamhoff begin their married life in this small rural town. Five years and two children later, John has a chance meeting with a Lutheran missionary and is cast into his vision of homesteading in the wilds of Wyoming. Following a rutted stagecoach road, they travel by covered wagon from Cheyenne across the rugged, unsettled state. Mary soon realizes her worst dream. Every hill they climb, every barren sagebrush-covered prairie they cross, brings them closer to John’s dream and farther from her own. Reaching the unsettled benchland of Germania is the beginning of the worse than hard years. By 1908, Mary has birthed four more daughters, and John is known as one of the largest sheep operations in the Big Horn Basin. In 1910 he buys another section of farmland and expands his operations to harvesting other’s crops, selling automobiles, acting as the area banker, and mortician. Mary’s life revolves around her children and putting food on the table, until her youngest son breaks his hip in a devastating horse accident. The Great Depression hits them hard but they are used to tough times on the farm—they have food but little else. Just when a new day dawns, fate deals the Wamhoff family an unthinkable blow, one they never saw coming.
German Yankee
The first book in a new paternal series!
1858: John Westerhoff finds himself at the crossroads of a life-changing decision—three more years in the Prussian Cavalry or emigrate to America. He takes the gamble and sails for America. John arrives in German-settled Warsaw, Illinois where his dreams of owning a farm are dashed with the onset of the Civil War. Submitting to what his conscience and heart tell him, he joins Merrill’s Horse of the 2nd Missouri Union Cavalry. He is a farrier by trade and a valued member of the cavalry. “Without horses the cavalry becomes infantry!” The fighting takes him to the hotly divided state of Missouri---the Western Front of the Civil War. After numerous bloody battles and terrible suffering, John returns to Warsaw, marries, and becomes a farmer and a father. The bitterness of the war lingers causing John and Elizabeth to take their three children and travel by covered wagon to the fertile rolling hills of Nebraska to homestead. There, they are baptized by the peace, hope, and promise of a new beginning. Every day brings a new trial and tribulation, it’s called ‘life’.
From the maternal series, the first and third books were awarded best in historical fiction by the Wyoming State Historical Society
