Nancy Christman Weliever, Indiana Woman
Bernard L. Albertson

THE BOOK

Running from personal tragedy and war, Nancy Christman Weliever, Indiana Woman stepped out into the world as it once was. She starts west only to find danger and death are constant traveling companions. Her courage, her ten-gage scatter gun and the help of a tough old black hunter and the span of huge mules that pull the wagon are her only weapons against overwhelming odds. This is the first book of a trilogy. Mr. Albertson is now working on the second. Which will be titled The Copper Penny.

This seventy-seven thousand-word story plays out in the years just prior to the Civil War. The black character Zacaria Farley developed immediately into a strong character. Like so many of the early free black men this character remained true to himself and was ever willing to die for his freedom of choice and manhood. In writing this book I found that in each instance of danger he seemed to do those things that came naturally to him in each given situation, this character seemed to grow in strength and almost became the dominant character. The white woman Nancy Weliever, and her son Peter, seemed to draw and learn from Zacaria's strength right from the beginning.

The main character, Nancy Weliever, was strong from the beginning as well. Her strength and determination to seek out a new life for herself and her son Peter made her to me at least, a complete person. The loss of her husband and injury of her son strengthened, as well as hurt her, yet she was not afraid to be a woman in a mans world. Nancy faced life's challenges with a combination of determination, fear, anger and love. Nancy Weliever demonstrates to us all that the true strength of this nation came from those brave men and women who accepted the challenges of the times and overcame the dangers to find their reward at trails end. They were, and are, for that matter the ones who set down the foundation on which we now stand. Those strange and ghostly things that seemed to call those early ones toward distant and unknown horizons, call to us still. This is what makes America strong, these different peoples and their strength are the heritage of the Americas.

This book started out as Juvenile Fiction and I tried very hard to maintain that level of writing. However, as the book progressed it became obvious that it is suited for adults as well. It has also become obvious that the adventures of Nancy Weliever are not over and I am now working on the second in a series of writings about her adventures. The second book is called The Copper Penny, and the third will, I believe, be called Welievers´s Railroad. Please let me know how you like this first writing. I am always interested in the opinions of young people.

DEDICATION

I was born in nineteen thirty-eight. My mother, the second of five sisters was born in nineteen thirteen. My grandfather on my mothers side was born in eighteen eighty-nine, and his mother Nancy, was born in eighteen sixty-three. Born Nancy Christman in a small town in Pennsylvania, she and her younger brother Billy traveled with her family in a covered wagon hundreds of miles, arriving in the town of Darlington Indiana the following year. Grams lived a long life dying in nineteen fifty-one. She seemed to take to me for some reason and I remember her well.

At first glance, she seemed a small frail woman. Always wearing over the ankle button up shoes and an ankle to neck dress held tight around the throat by one of the many-broaches she had collected over the years.

She was proper, but frail she was not. Full of the energy of life, grams had been cut of the same cloth as so many of the women of her time. Not for a minute would she leave the house without her bonnet tied securely under her chin. On the hottest days while making her own soap or candles in the big iron kettle that sat to the side of her small house, or weeding her garden with her "grub hoe" she would be in her bonnet.

Her small home was full of all the things that would make a small boy want to return again and again. Her parlor contained such items as a crank Victrola, a stuffed bobcat, which she had shot herself outside of her chicken coop, a stuffed barn owl, a goose, that I always suspected was an old friend she couldn't part with, A very large turtle shell, a stuffed badger, and as strange as it seemed a stuffed penguin.

On an evening after the dishes were dried and put away, Grams would light her wall lamps and the one on her "bible table" as she called it, sit in her big hard backed rocker and read her bible for at least an hour. Once in a while, she would take the time to tell me of her childhood. I have heard her speak of Indian friends she had known, and of folks passing through who would camp down by the "crick" [Creek, stream, and brook.] until they got rested a bit before they moved on. She told me of her father speaking of the big wagon trains heading west out of Independence Missouri. It seemed he had wanted to move further west, but his wife had gone as far as she was going in a wagon. A point well made because he never moved again.

I would hear of the "Great President" murdered by that scoundrel Booth. Grams knew the Gettysburg Address by heart and would on occasion recite it. The one thing that irritated her about me was the man I was named after. Lee, Robert E. I think perhaps the reason for that was the Civil War uniform that hung in her closet.

My relationship with Grams carried over to my schoolwork. Class study about the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or any of those great utterances made by the women and men responsible for the framework of this country, would place those very people in the room with me.

Great grandmother was a tiny but formidable woman who made a difference. A true pioneer. Like so many of the other women of her time she gave quiet strength to this country. I was fortunate indeed to have known her, and this book though fiction is the way I always saw her.

THE AUTHOR

I was born in a small hospital in Southern California. Most of my growing up years were spent in the then little town of Chula Vista California located next to the Mexican border.

At age sixteen, my home happened to be an old car. That is where I learned about life and the need for one to set goals and priorities. It was also the first time I picked up a pencil and started putting my thoughts on paper. Looking back, that was almost fifty years ago.

Commonly referred to as a service brat, I joined the service myself in nineteen fifty-seven. In my possession now, is an honorable discharge from the U.S. Coast Guard as well as one from the U.S. Army, of which I am very proud.

Married at age twenty-two. I later raised four children alone after the death of my wife. Now at age sixty-one, I have a wonderful sixteen-year-old son, and a wife who is my very best friend. That's as good as it gets.

I believe in God, honesty, integrity, and honor. Beauty to me is in the sunrises and sunsets, in children's smiles and laughter, in small yellow flowers, and the magnificent beauty of nature, and the challenge and excitement of life.

There is but one piece of advice I give to young people when I speak to them of writing. Do your research and then write for yourself, and always, write from the heart.

Bernard L. Albertson

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