Completing the Vision:
Finishing Marjorie Carter’s Red With Native Blood trilogy
by Randal Nerhus
I met Marjorie Carter in a writing group in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in 2002. She was of Cherokee descent and was writing a Native American historical novel. Partially crippled after a stroke, she needed help maintaining her ranch. I had grown up on a farm, so I volunteered to repair her fences and buildings. I also became involved with her novel, Red With Native Blood, during that time. Marjorie had her writings on plastic floppies and multiple computers. It took us weeks to transfer everything onto her best desktop computer, and by then, we had become good friends.
In many ways, I was a broken man when I met Marjorie. Her spiritual guidance over the next two years required me to be brutally honest with myself, and parts of our conversations would seep into Red With Native Blood in the years to come.
In June of 2004, I had exhausted my finances and flew to the US with plans to save money and return to Marjorie within the year. Sadly, Marjorie died of pneumonia three weeks later. After some months of grieving, I learned that I had the only copy of Marjorie’s manuscript. With that, and the confluence of other events, I felt called upon to bring her novellas to publication. Though I had been exposed to parts of Marjorie’s writing in our weekly writing group, the story really came together when I read her final draft. Her writing was unique, and it took a bit of adjusting to plunge myself in Marjorie’s Native American world. However, it wasn’t long until I realized she had crafted more than a story—her writing generated vivid, lasting images in the reader’s mind. The landscapes and characters kept floating into my awareness for days after reading her manuscript. It was as if I was walking their journey with them. The story held nothing back, and it felt bigger than me. I seldom had such a reaction to a novel and knew this was the work of a master.
Doubts of completing Marjorie’s series hindered me to the point where I dared not start. How could I write about three tribal teen girls in the 1870s? Could I keep Marjorie’s voice throughout? Could I put together an ending that the story deserves? I had never heard of an unknown author completing another unknown author’s work, let alone trying to publish it. Still, Marjorie’s novellas would be lost in the sands of time if I didn’t try, and I finally concluded that I couldn’t do it alone.
After sending Marjorie’s friends the manuscript, they read it and offered suggestions. Around that time, my coworker Steven Lenker stepped up to help. Not only was he a demanding editor and grammarian, his sense of story elements and his background in anthropology and astronomy were just what the story needed.
Consider me crazy. In the fifteen years that followed, I asked over sixty readers to critique the series. They were of all ages and walks of life. Some with degrees in English, others fellow writers, others just readers. I am very grateful to the women who heavily rewrote and enlarged the scenes of the girls’ most intimate moments.
Still, the most helpful advice came from Marjorie herself: “Writing is easy. Just go there and write what you see.”
From the beginning, my intention was to follow Marjorie’s trajectory of the value of family, community, friendship, and tradition without glossing over the horrors of war. I hope I have fulfilled Marjorie’s wishes by completing her inspiring story of the resilience, grit, and perseverance of a young female Apache warrior.
The first novella in the Red With Native Blood series, Talks Like Thunder, is available now on Kindle. The audiobook will be released on April 11, on Audible.
In the second novella, Falling Star, Thunder meets a Cheyenne girl Falling Star and they forge a friendship in their harrowing journey to escape the white-eyes. Falling Star is set to be released on Kindle in May, and Audible in June.
Red With Native Blood’s incredible culmination in the third and last novella of the trilogy, Singing Wind, the story of a young Lakota girl named Singing Wind who meets Thunder and Falling Star, all hoping to start a new life. Singing Wind will be released on Kindle in July and Audible in August.
I hope you will enjoy Marjorie’s novella series as much as I did.
