This week I’m hosting Gail Pallotta with Love Turns the Tide and Mary Connealy with The Husband Tree. If you want to enter the drawing for the books (Love Turns the Tide will be a download), please leave a comment on one of the post during the week with your email address. I will not enter you without an email address (my way to contact you if you win). If you don’t want to leave an email address, another way you can enter is to email me at margaretdaley@gmail.com. The drawings end Sunday (Jan. 24th) evening.
Interview with the heroine from The Husband Tree:
1. Belle Tanner Wilson O’Rourk Santoni, tell me the most interesting thing about you.
I’ve been married three times to three worthless men. I married them because so many people believed a woman has to have a man, even though I haven’t have a man yet. The husbands don’t count. So I just buried the last one and I’ve sworn an oath to never marry again. In fact, if I could arrange it, I’d never lay eyes on one of the worthless varmints again. Except I’ve got to push my cattle to market and I can’t do it alone. So I need to hire help…and it’s gonna be male help. Disgusting, but I have no choice.
2. What do you do for fun?
I’ve got a ranch to run. I have no time for fun.
3. What do you put off doing because you dread it?
Talking to men. Working with men. Dealing with men. It always turns bad on me.
4. What are you afraid of most in life?
My own bad judgment. I keep picking worthless men. Why? What is broken in me that I pick men who won’t help?
5. What do you want out of life?
My life is all about my children, taking care of them. The girls and I run the ranch together and the ranch is only important because it’s supporting us, feeding us, sheltering us. I want nothing but to be left alone to raise my girls. I am SICK of people telling me a woman has to be married to survive.
6. What is the most important thing to you?
My children. The only good thing to come out of my bad marriages.
7. Do you read?
If so, what is your favorite type of book to read? We own a Bible. That’s the only book in the house. I’ve taught my children to read using it.
8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I’d get a strong enough backbone to turn down all the men who are going to come charging in here with their marriage proposals. I don’t have any illusions that the men are interested in me. They say I’m beautiful, but I’ve got callused hands and my hair stays back in a brain. My skin is rough from the wind and sun. My lips are chapped and I haven’t had on a pretty dress in 15 years. What I do have is the prettiest mountain valley west of the Mississippi and three thousand head of cattle, cash on the hoof. I could look like the north end of a southbound mule and men would still want to marry me.
9. Do you have a pet?
If so, what is it and why that pet? No pets. Animals are to eat and to ride and to sell for cash money. I don’t even let myself get attached to a special horse.
10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?
I wish I could say I’d never marry the men I did. But I love my daughters and they’re the only thing that makes my life worth living. So to wish the men away, I’d have to give them up. Still, I wish I’d have gone after Gerald O’Rourk with a skillet the first time he came on the property rather than waiting until after he knocked me down the first time.
I can’t understand why my father raised me to run his ranch then cast me aside when he had a son. I don’t think going back would help, but I feel like I’d have lived my life differently if I’d have known Pa expected me to be a wife instead of a rancher. I guess I’d have ignored my pa and his teaching and stayed inside with my ailing mother. But I can’t imagine doing that, so what’s the point of going back?