This week I’m hosting Lee Tobin McClain with Engaged to the Single Mom (Worldwide) and Regina Scott with Would-Be Wilderness Wife (US only). If you want to enter the drawings for the books, please leave a comment on your post 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 (Mar. 15th) evening.
Interview with the hero from Would-Be Wilderness Wife by Regina Scott:
1. Catherine Stanway, tell me the most interesting thing about you.
My father taught me to be a nurse. With only one school for the profession for women in the country, I feel very fortunate to have had a physician for a father, and one so forward looking as to agree with me that a woman can be an effective and compassionate caregiver for those who are ailing.
2. What do you do for fun?
I used to do many things–read, visit friends in our little village in Massachusetts, go for carriage rides. My younger brother even taught me to drive. I’ve had to learn new ways to have fun now that I’m living in the frontier settlement of Seattle. Singing a hymn to scare off a cougar–that was a new experience for me, and I’m not yet sure whether to call it fun!
3. What do you put off doing because you dread it?
Thinking about my brother and father. We were such a close family, all in the medical profession, all dedicated to helping others. I’m sure that’s why Father and Nathan felt compelled to join the army and fight against the Confederacy. But oh, it was hard to be left behind, first when they enlisted, and then when they died on those bloody battlefields. That’s why I joined the Mercer expedition to Seattle, to escape all the memories.
4. What are you afraid of most in life?
Hurting like that again. Losing someone I care deeply about. Better to devote myself to my patients than to risk my heart. Medicine is clinical, clean, without all the messy entanglements of love.
5. What do you want out of life?
To know I have made a difference in people’s lives. Maybe that’s why, when Drew Wallin’s youngest brother kidnapped me and carried me off into their wilderness farm to care for his ailing mother, I agreed to stay until she was well.
6. What is the most important thing to you?
Family, whether those we are born into or those we make ourselves.
7. Do you read? If so, what is your favorite type of book to read?
I love to read! My favorites are good adventure yarns like The Last of the Mohicans. You should have seen me when Drew Wallin’s family made him read aloud from “The Courtship of Miles Standish” with me. I knew that epic poem nearly by heart, but when we got to the part where Priscilla Mullens asks John Alden to speak about his own love instead of singing the praises of his captain, I actually used Drew’s name instead. “Speak for yourself, Drew,” I said, as if I was ordering him to court me!
8. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
I would give myself more patience. When I see something that needs doing, I find it hard to sit back and let things unfold. I want to fix it, now.
9. Do you have a pet? If so, what is it and why that pet?
Alas, I could not bring a pet with me on the ship from New York to Seattle. And the frontier, I’m learning, is a very difficult place for pets.
10. If you could travel back in time, where would you go and why?
My first thought is that I would go back before the days my father and brother were killed, to warn them and stop them from going to war. But if I did that, I’d never have come to Seattle, never met Drew and his family, never thought to fall in love again.