Historical Romance Writer
Sherry Shindelar
Click here for my monthly newsletter and a free short story set in the 1850’s on the Western frontier.
About Sherry
Sherry’s love for history and romance along with her faith flow through her writing .
I have been in love with stories since I was a child. I’d swing for hours on my swing set, pumping my legs back and forth, dreaming up stories in my head. Even then I had a flair for romance: creating new love interests and episodes for Star Trek’s Captain Kirk, before moving onto plotting original romantic dramas and adventures in distant lands.
My favorite possession at age nine was a set of author playing cards (a matching game with the photos of famous women authors). I wanted to be an author when I grew up and bring stories to life on the written page, stories that would impact my readers.
A visit to a historic home in the Shenandoah Valley, when my husband and I were newly married, spurred my love for history and planted the seed for the story of my heart. A few years later, I wrote the novel, then buried it in box in my closet.
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Twenty years ago, I read a captive narrative that broke my heart. Cynthia Ann Parker was taken at age nine and spent twenty-four years with the Comanche, married, and had a family. Then, she was torn away from them by Texas Rangers and U.S. Cavalry. Cynthia Ann ended up dying of a broken heart.
The story haunted me for two decades, until I decided to put my pen to paper and write my own fictional captive story, with a much different ending.
This is the story of Eyes-Like-Sky.
Texas Forsaken, set in 1860 Texas, debuted May 2024 and is now available .
ACFW
First Impressions Winner 2020
ACFW
Genesis Semi-Finalist 2021
Crown Finalist 2022
ACFW Genesis Finalist 2023
TEXAS FORSAKEN
Coming May 2024
The man who killed her husband is the only one who can save her baby. His pledge to protect her and the child could cost him everything.
Texas 1860. Seven years ago, Maggie Logan (Eyes-Like-Sky) lost everything she knew when a raid on a wagon train tore her from her family. But she survived and adapted, married a Comanche warrior and had a baby. English and her past life are vague shadows. In one terrible battle, the U.S. Cavalry destroys her world. She is taken captive again, this time by those who call themselves her people but who are not. Forced into a world, she wants nothing to do with, Eyes-Like-Sky fights to keep her child. Her only hope is an engagement with the man who killed her husband.
Captain Garret Ramsey enrolled in West Point to escape his overbearing father. Assigned to the Texas frontier, Garret finds himself caught up in an Indian war in which both sides commit atrocities. Plagued by guilt for his own role, he seeks redemption by taking responsibility for Eyes-Like-Sky and her baby. He is determined to do whatever it takes to protect them. But will he really risk everything for a woman whose heart is buried in a grave?
Favorites
- Brokeburn: Diary of Kate Stone (My all-time favorite)
- Cormany Diaries: Rachel and Samuel Cormany (diaries of a northern husband and wife)
- Sad Earth, Sweet Heaven: Diary of Lucy Buck
- Kate Sperry
- A Civil War Captain and His Lady (Courtship Letters) Editor: Gene Barr
- Defend the Valley by Margaretta Barton Colt
18th & 19th Century Captivity Narratives (True Accounts):
- The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman (by Margot Mifflin)
- Captured by the Indians: 15 Firsthand Accounts, 1750-1870, edited by Frederick Drummer
- Captive of the Cheyenne by Russ Czaplewski
- Empire of the Summer Moon by S.C. Gwynne
- Nine Years Among the Indians by Herman Lehmann
- Sixteen Weeks in the Sioux Teepees by Sarah Wakefield
- Narrative of my Captivity Among the Sioux Indians by Fanny Kelly
- “I found him whom my soul loveth.” Song of Solomon 3:4
- “Now unto Him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think according to the power that worketh in us.” Ephesians 4:20
- And Ruth said, “Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God.
“Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions….10 Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” Psalms 51: 1, 10
“Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea” Psalm 46: 2
- Pamela by Samuel Richardson
- Charlotte Temple by Susanna Rowson
- Belinda by Maria Edgeworth
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
- Hope Leslie by Catherine Maria Sedgwick
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barret Browning
- North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
- Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
- St. Elmo by Augusta Jane Evans
- The Verdict by Rebecca Harding Davis
- Middlemarch by George Elliot
- The Story of Avis by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
- Ben Hur by Lew Wallace
- Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz
- Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- LaVyrle Spencer novels
- Francin Rivers novels
- Deanne Gist
- Laure Frantz novels
- Jody Hedlund novels
- Lori Benton novels