A Pioneer Love Story, The Letters of Minnie Hobart - Softcover

Priscilla H. Wilson grew up in Arkansas City, Kansas and was one of the founders of TeamTech, Inc., a Kansas City-based strategic consulting, facilitation and training firm. Priscilla earned a BA in Education from the University of Oklahoma with advanced studies at Northeastern University in Chicago. Priscilla H Wilson is an avid birdwatcher and award-winning author. Her essay, Responsibilities of Motherhood, which followed a mallard duck mother and her twelve ducklings down the street to the creek appeared in Kansas City Voices, 2008. Her A Pioneer Love Story, the Letters of Minnie Hobart won the Oklahoma Writer s Federation Best Non-fiction Book Award for 2009. Her book, The Facilitative Way, Leadership That Makes the Difference is being used in leadership training situations in the USA, Canada, Great Britain, Belgium, Nigeria, Australia, and China. A Chinese translation was published in 2005. Wilson belongs to the Kansas City Writers Group, Oklahoma Writers Federation and Writers League of Texas, International Association of Facilitators, Greater Kansas City Festival of Faiths, and Village Presbyterian Church. She lives in Mission Hills, Kansas.

This book is the story of the author's, grandmother Minnie, participation in building community in new territory. Her grandfather, Timothy Dwight Hobart, was also a remarkable man about whom much already had been written. (From the Introduction) Shining with spirit and staying power, as a pioneer entering the Panhandle of Texas in 1888 Minnie Wood Warren Hobart was physically frailer than many pioneer women. Minnie's enduring love for my grandfather sustained her through dramatic change. She grew up in Vermont, green, hilly, tranquil, with flowing water in the rivers. In 1888, she married her childhood sweetheart and moved to the Panhandle of Texas, brown, flat, windy, with sand patterns in the rivers. What if she had surrendered to the strangeness that was the Texas Panhandle? In writing this story, I wanted to go beyond my grandmother's life as a footnote in history to discover the real story of this woman who lived in such changing and revolutionary times. The book is based on Minnie's letters from Texas to her mother in Vermont. They form the core of the story and give the history of that part of the country from a woman's perspective. Over fifty pictures add to the story of Minnie's life and times. The dignity of economic situations and the struggle of making decisions are woven throughout the story. However, the main frame is how they created and maintained relationships as they built community. This book is a story of love. --Priscilla H Wilson, the author