Welcome to My Website! Myra Hargrave McIlvain
My website is for sharing the Texas tales I love to tell. Please note that the cover of Stein House is sporting a First Place sticker for 2014 General Fiction from the Texas Association of Authors. I hope you will explore my musings--fact and fiction. And please contact me.
Click on Lectures at the top of this page for a list of my lectures. My weekly historic Texas blogs are going again! Watch for a post every Friday afternoon. Here's My New Novel
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CLICK ICON to READ REVIEW
A Kirkus STAR review!
Stein House paints a compelling family saga of German immigrants thrust into the bustling nineteenth century Texas seaport of Indianola. Helga Heinrich and her children arrive in Indianola haunted by the memory of Max's death and determined to start a new life.
A woman of strong passions, Helga operates Stein House for boarders of all stripes whose involvement in the rigors of a town on the edge of frontier influences and molds all their lives: the cruelties of yellow fever and slavery, the wrenching choices of Civil War and Reconstruction, murder, alcoholism and the devastation wrought by the hurricane of 1886. STEIN HOUSE--2015 Winner Adult Fiction, North Texas Book Festival, Denton STEIN HOUSE--2015 Finalist, Historical Fiction, International Book Awards STEIN HOUSE--Best Books Read in 2015, Gals-Very Smart Gals: http://verysmartgals.blogspot.com/2015/09/stein-house-by-myra-hargrave-mcilvain.html Texas Book Club Interview: http://youtu.be/lHlXKTZjqW4 Questions for Book Club Discussion of Stein House: • What captured your imagination and made you keep reading Stein House OR what turned you off and resulted in you putting it aside? • Did you identify with Helga or Amelia or any of the other characters? Why? • Did you feel anger at any of the characters? What stirred that response? • Did the time period 1853 to 1886 interest you? How about all the history, did it get in the way of the story? • Did you learn some things about that time period that you did not know? • What did you think of Helga’s parenting? • Did you worry about any of the characters more than the others? • Did the characters seem real to you? • Did you see any parallels with our current times? What? • How about the way Helga handled Paul’s increasing use of alcohol? Was it appropriate? Should she have done something differently? • How about Helga’s response to Hermie’s amputation? • Did the things that happened to the characters seem real, seem like they could have happened? • How about Helga’s relationship with Eagle? • Should Helga have given up Stein House and traveled with Eagle? • What did you think of Helga’s lack of connection to the church? With her decision not to push the children to give to the church? • Her papa was a pastor. Did she act like a pastor’s daughter? • Would you like to know more about Amelia? How she ended up in Indianola and her life before Helga and the children arrived? Did Amelia act as you expected after Dr. Stein disappeared in the 1875 storm? |
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