Welcome to My Website!

Myra H. McIlvain
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.
AUSTIN AMERICAN STATESMAN ARTICLE ABOUT MYRA (click to view)

Thanks for your reviews on Amazon and/or Goodreads.

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THE DOCTOR’S WIFE, my latest historic fiction, is a prequel to STEIN HOUSE and is the story of Amelia Anton, a teacher who leaves Germany in 1845 on an immigrant ship bound for Texas. After the death at sea of the child she is hired to tutor, her employer abandons her. Amelia quickly accepts the marriage proposal of the much-respected shipboard physician, Joseph Stein, only to discover that he is not the husband she expected.
Dr. Stein takes Amelia to the coastal tent settlement on Matagorda Bay where hundreds of disease-ridden Germans are huddled in tents—stranded during the Mexican-American War—waiting for wagons to transport them inland. This story of heartache, betrayal, and business success of Amelia and Dr. Stein is woven into the struggle of the German community that chooses to remain on that barren shell beach and creates the burgeoning seaport of Indianola.
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CLICK ICON to READ REVIEW


A Kirkus STAR review!
NEW EDITION

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​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. 

Book Signings for The Doctor's Wife 
Stein House & Texas Tales:

July 17,  AARP, Talk/Signing
Sept 5, Langdon Launch Party, Granbury, Reading/Signing
Sept. 6, Red & Whine Book Club, Edna, Talk/Signing
Sept. 19,Kerrville Genealogical Society, Talk/Signing
Sept. 20, Kerrville Dynamic Learning Inst, Talk/Signing
Oct. 4, San Antonio de Bexar NSDAR, Talk/Signing
Oct. 26, Retired Officers' Wives, Balcones CC, Talk/Signing
Oct 27-28, Texas Book Festival, Austin, Signing
Nov. 14,  Jester Book Club, Talk/Signing
Dec. 1, Author Corral, Goliad, Signing
Dec. 6, Art Connections Gallery, LaGrange, Signing