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May 2002 |
The
Rancher's Daughters #4: EXPLAINING
HERSELF
EXPLAINING HERSELF is the fourth book in the Rancher's Daughters
series, about the 3rd daughter--Victoria. I could tell even in Laurel's story,
PROVING HERSELF, that nosy Victoria was going to be fun to write. For
one thing, she's the most progressive of Jacob and Elizabeth's daughters... the
most like Elizabeth, for that matter! This page is the place to find extra tidbits about it, including: |
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It's an attractive cover (though oddly familiar). The heroine resembles Victoria (though in a scandalous dress!). The hero doesn't look (to me) like the tall and sharp-faced Laramie, but he's not ugly either! The pose is sexier than fit this particular book. And I definitely like the mountains behind them. Book #4, and the Big Horn Mountains finally show up--yay! |
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"Filled with characters from past romances and with enough action to
satisfy any western reader, this is a most enjoyable read. SENSUAL."
"This story is full of secrets, desire, laughter and love.
Explaining Herself should be at the top of every romance lover's list for
it's sure to be a satisfying cure for Spring Fever. "
"Author Yvonne Jocks has created a pair of wonderful characters in Victoria
and Ross. Victoria, in particular, is a funny, but completely convincing mix
of innocence and sensual delight. Her insatiable curiosity and unselfconscious
chattiness makes for a delightful counterpoint to the silent and damaged Ross.
Yet their attraction seems doomed. Even if Ross could put aside the revenge
he's lived his entire life for, what could an outlaw and gunman offer to the
richest man in Sherman Wyoming's daughter?" |
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How I see Ross and Victoria... I wasn't sure whether to include this part or not... readers often picture someone completely different than did I, and that's okay. But the book cover always sets an image (in this case, one I wholly approve of!), and I'm usually curious about who, if anybody, other authors were thinking about when they wrote THEIR characters, so here goes. QUALIFIER: For what it's worth, characters are most of all THEMSELVES. I often picture actors as a sort of... model, the basis from which the character then develops in my mind. But that does not mean the character is just like the actor by any means! So take this with a grain of salt.
Victoria may like to dig up secrets, but Ross has more than enough secrets he means to keep buried! After a traumatic childhood (including earning a reputation as a cattle rustler), he got in with the kind of men Jacob Garrison would call "bad" ... and other people still wonder about. He's great with a gun, but not so quick with words. That's one of several reasons why Victoria is so good for him! He's wounded in more ways than one.
The actor he most resembles is Goran Visjnic, who currently plays Dr. Luka Kovac on ER. Just imagine him a little younger....
Victoria has always considered herself the eyes and ears (her father would say, and the nose) of the Garrison girls. The third daughter, she's benefited from having such progressive mother--and resembling that mother enough that her father gives her some leeway now and then! She still has to explain herself on a regular basis.
The actress I found who most resembles Victoria is a young Sigrid Thornton, from THE MAN FROM SNOWY RIVER. (I discovered that listening to the music over and over while I was writing PROVING HERSELF). |
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For those history buffs among you, here are some themes and trivia that came up while I was writing EXPLAINING HERSELF....
Cattle Rustling, huh? Hey, did you know that many of the big outfit ranchers tended to look the other way when a single cow was slaughtered, if done by homesteaders trying to feed their families? There may have been a great deal of animosity between "the farmer and the cowboy," but this practice was common enough that there's a phrase to describe what a rancher would call when he came upon a suspicious carcass hanging outside a neighbor's cabin: "Slow Elk." The rustling that really angered the rancher was rustling aimed not at survival but profit--outlaws who would rustle a great number of cattle, or steal the offspring of the rancher's cows and claim them as his own, or small time ranchers who moved onto the frontier well after the established ranchers had made the area safe for them. THOSE were the rustlers who invited "necktie parties."
In Wyoming, in the last quarter of the century, it became a hanging offense to have a "running iron" on you, because that as a branding iron that could be used to change brands. Another piece of trivia is that one of the more famous rustlers during this time, and in this area, was a fellow named Butch Cassidy. It was common or cattlemen to hire "range detectives" or "cattle detectives," often thugs with an official title, to patrol against rustlers and warn small-time ranchers out of the area.
So Range Detectives are Bad Guys? In EXPLAINING HERSELF, Ross Laramie hires on as a Range Detective at the Circle-T ranch. This proved a little tricky, since range detectives have a bad reputation--heck, just look at "Idaho Johnson" in FORGETTING HERSELF! The main reason range detectives have such a bad reputation is a famous man named Tom Horn, who was hanged in Wyoming for killing a sheepherder's young son. There's still a great deal of debate about whether he was guilty. Another guy who didn't do the profession much good was named "Diamondfield Jack" (see DIAMOND FIELD JACK: A Study in Frontier Justice, by David H. Grover), from Idaho. Jack, by the way, was the reason I named the evil range detective in FH "Idaho." After doing some research, I decided that there are good men and bad men in almost every profession, why not range detecting? It proved especially useful, since Laramie himself isn't sure for quite some time which side of the law he falls on.
Did you mention BUTCH CASSIDY? Yep. The same fellow I briefly included in BEHAVING HERSELF. Actually, Butch himself doesn't make an appearance in Vic and Ross's story, because I needed to include an outlaw for several appearances and felt uncomfortable using a man who, either realistically or as a legend, is so well established in the American psyche. So I chose a very real, less-famous member of the Wild Bunch, a fellow named Lonny Logan. Nowadays, Lonny is most famous for being the younger brother of Harvey "Kid Curry" Logan. But back then, the Logan Brothers were a power to be contended with--part Indian and all outlaw. Lonny, in my story, represents what Ross Laramie could so easily become, depending on the choices he now makes with his life.
Why Does Laramie Use an Alias? Because he's an outlaw... at least, he has a criminal past, and he tends to hang with other fellows on the owl-hoot trail. But it's not that simple. Even in his youth, his name wasn't his birth name. Complicated? Let me try to explain the many handles of my hero.
The frontier was a great place for men to start over, so I decided to write a hero whose family came not from the British Isles (which can be seen as practically American) but from Eastern Europe. Therefore, Ross was born Drazen Lauranovic, in Eastern Europe. His father brought him and his mother and older siblings to America in search of a new life, and unlike the poor victims in Upton Sinclair's THE JUNGLE, they actually started to make it work. That's when Josip Lauranovic became Joseph Laurence, and Drazen--often called "Draz" for short--was renamed Ross. Not to hide their identity, but to celebrate their place as Americans. However, once his family was accused of rustling, the townsfolk fell back to using their "foreign" names (it made them easier to vilify), at which point Ross wasn't sure whether to call himself a Laurence or a Lauranovic. When he later ended up in Texas, where men started teasing him about having spent time in Laramie, Wyoming (that's where the state penitentiary was), the name stuck.
So Ross is a Juvenile Delinquent? He WAS. He's grown up now. This was another area of interesting research--juvenile reform. It was considered pretty newfangled, at the time (though Elizabeth Garrison, the girls' mother, is of course a great proponent). Here are some websites I found useful:
For a timeline of juvenile reform in the United States, try: http://www.arc.org/erase/j_timeline.html
For an interesting article about one of Utah's earliest reform schools (I was particularly interested in finding out how the Old West handled this problem), see: http://www.utahhistorytogo.org/juvenile.html
I also found the actual records from a 19th-century Ohio reform school, which gave a surprisingly intimate glimpse into the children being sent there, especially those convicted of "Incorrigibility!"
Could Victoria really be a Reporter back then? One of my pet peeves in historical romance (increasingly rare, I might add) is the heroine who is made seem strong and independent by basically acting like a man--drinking, spitting, swearing, and working masculine jobs. Some authors (like the incredible Maggie Osborne) make it work, usually by noting that these heroines don't tend to get accepted by society real fast. But others seem to be ignoring the historical world completely, which for me breaks my submersion in the story. I have tried, even with Laurel (who wanted to be a cowboy), to write heroines who are strong within their own times. Victoria is no exception.
Her initial goal for employment, by the way, was as a "hello girl" (or operator) for the new Telephone Company in Sheridan, but her father forbade it, because she's already bad enough about prying into other people's business. So reporter it was. The Old West was a great place for a woman writer to try to make her way, and even in the East, by the turn of the century, an incredible precedent had been set by the famous Nellie Bly. Nellie had quit reporting in order to marry and raise a family, by 1895, but I can guarantee you that Victoria would have known who she was. So did everyone else in the country!.
I "invented" the Sheridan Herald, where Victoria works, in order to allow myself more poetic license; in reality, the city had two papers. As of '94, at least, the Sheridan Post (Republican) and the Sheridan Enterprise (Democratic) were edited by J. W. Newell and Joe DeBarthe, respectively.
So as a Reporter, Does Vic have a Camera? Yes! She has a collapsible pocket camera from Kodak. Yes, in 1899! It would have cost her between $5 and $10. Unfortunately, the story was about half a year off for me to give her a Brownie. Brownie cameras (from Kodak) were the ones that made it truly common for every middle-class family to have a camera (slogan: You push the button, we do the rest). They sold for $1/camera, and you mailed the entire camera to the developer's, where it was reloaded--very similar to disposables, nowadays, except that you got the camera back. The pictures were of course black-and-white--and round! Perhaps influenced by the movie BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID, I had a good time making Victoria a supporter of newfangled things in the Old West.
What other Newfangled Things does she have? Victoria rides a ladies' bicycle when in town--by the late 19th century, with the invention of the pneumatic tire, they were hugely popular--and she wants to buy a typewriter. But she's still not as modern as her mother.
You mention a lawyer named Darrow.... Yes, I do--the lawyer who defended Ross as a child, hired by Victoria Garrison. As to whether he's CLARENCE Darrow, the famed lawyer from the later Scopes Monkey Trial and the defense of Leopold and Loeb, you get to decide. Clarence Darrow WAS practicing law in Chicago, in 1888. And Elizabeth Garrison DOES have a special knack for recognizing the possibilities in famous people before they actually become famous. So you can probably guess my thoughts on the matter.... | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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ROSS:
VICTORIA: