This week I’m hosting Carol Cox with A Match Made in Texas (US only), Mona Hodgson with The Quilted Heart (US and Canada only), and Vickie McDonough with Call of the Prairie (US only). If you want to enter the drawings for the books, 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. 26th) evening.
Interview with the hero from Call of the Prairie by Vickie McDonough:
1. Josh Harper, tell me the most interesting thing about you. I suppose some folks might find it interesting that I grew up on my parents’ remote stage stop in Kansas, along the Santa Fe Trail. I’m also a lot different than my two brothers. They’re both taller and brawnier than I, not that I couldn’t take one of them down if I had to. I’m not embarrassed to say I like flowers. I have a big, colorful garden of them in my back yard. My interest started at the ranch when I got an empty journal for Christmas one year. I started drawing pictures of the flowers near our home and then looking up the scientific info on them, when I got the chance. The women of the family love my book of flowers, although my brothers still tease me about it every now and then.
2. What do you do for fun? I don’t have much free time because my niece and nephew are living with me so they can attend school, but there are three things I prefer to do when I get a little time to myself: read, work in my wood-working shed, or spend time in my garden.
3. What do you put off doing because you dread it? Lately, I’ve dreaded dropping off Corrie and Toby, my niece and nephew, at my neighbor’s house. Miss Maudie, the elderly lady who normally watches them after school and on days I have to go to work early, had a bad fall. Her niece came to help, but I have my doubts about the tiny woman. I’m not sure the citified gal is up to the task of caring for an ill woman and a houseful of rowdy young’uns. If I had any other place to take them, I would do so.
4. What are you afraid of most in life? The thought of something happening to Corrie or Toby scares me spitless. I’ve never been a father, so it’s sometimes been a challenge to keep them inline and on-task, especially Toby. The children belong to my older brother, Aaron, and he already lost his wife in a tragic accident. I don’t know if he could handle losing one of his children, so I feel extra pressure to make sure nothing happens to them, and that only increases my anxiety at leaving them with my neighbor.
5. What do you want out of life? I’d like to find a godly woman like my ma to marry and to have a family of my own—one that’s as close-knit as my family is.
6. What is the most important thing to you? God first and then family.
7. Do you read books? I love to read! If so, what is your favorite type of book? Just about any kind. I like novels, history books, scientific journals, and anything that has to do with nature.
8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I’d like to be bigger, like my brothers are. Both are several inches taller than I am and bigger in the shoulders. Ethan, my younger brother is even larger than I am, and that has always bothered me.
9. Do you have a pet? No. If so, what is it and why that pet? I do have a horse, but I don’t particularly consider him a pet.
10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why? I’d go back to the day my older brother’s wife died and try to save her. Her death has caused Aaron and the children much pain and suffering, and if I could keep them from all of that, I would.
