BOOK TWO OF FOUR
MAGGHIE
Magghie Wilder leads a simple life with her German parents in Conestoga Valley, Pennsylvania. Her mother teaches her plants and medicines, and from her father she learns to work with draft horses and understand their subtle language. Spurned by the village people, who call her witch, Magghie retreats into the world of plants and animals around her. When Mormon pioneers winter over in her valley, an outbreak of Cholera changes everything, forcing her to flee her home, and head West with her teams of big horses and the other survivors. She must step forward and take the reins before everything she knows is destroyed.
AWARD
Finalist, Chanticleer International Book Awards -
Laramie Prize for Western Fiction
Listen to an introduction from the Author
“One of the best storytellers from Nebraska that I’ve heard in years. Barbara is a must listen and read author. She is a gift to Nebraska!”
—PHIL SHUPBACH, Host, Platte River Sampler
I, Magghie Wilder, dedicate this to -
Maye Wilder, Hans Wilder, my Mother and Father
There is no need to try to remember them that went ahead.
I will always Know them, and cannot forget,
so, need not have to remember.
Always they are there in the air around me, in the leaves and grass,
and hair standing up on the horses’ backs.
Here they are, in my words, on this page,
they still stride before my eyes,
and if only I could draw a line as swiftly as a thought,
they would be dancing - alive - in front of yours,
they would be a picture
any eye could plainly see.
My mother and my father were known to me,
known to the land they walked on,
known to the horses, known by the trees.
And known to me…
Otherwise they kept almost entirely to themselves.
But I shan’t do that, cannot keep them to themselves.
In words and pictures, I will draw them out,
for everyone to see.
And remembered they will be.
“Like its forerunner, Big Horse Woman, Magghie immerses the reader in a time and place so completely that you can feel the earth beneath your feet and smell the herbs and flowers blown by the wind. This is made possible by the author's scrupulous research and the way she has of inhabiting the characters completely. I know of no other book (apart from Big Horse Woman) that paints such a vivid picture of the interdependence, and affinity, between the plant, animal and human worlds. It will also leave the reader wanting more, which is The Trail, the next book in Salvatore's epic four-part series.”
— EVAN ANDERSON, Author, Downriver: A Tale of Moving Pictures Before Hollywood
“One of the best storytellers from Nebraska that I've heard in years. Barbara is a must listen and read author. She is a gift to Nebraska!”
— PHIL SHUPBACH, Host, Platte River Sampler, KZUM Community Radio, Lincoln, NE
“Your writing, as with all great fiction, is like entering a dream, another world... It is iridescent, beautiful, very moving, very engrossing.”
— LESLIE T. SHARPE, Author, The Quarry Fox: And Other Critters of the Wild Catskills