Welcome to My Website!

Myra Hargrave McIlvain

My website is for sharing the Texas tales I love to tell. I hope you will explore my musings––fact and fiction. Please note that Stein House has been republished with a historic photo of Indianola on its cover. It is the same award-winning book as the earlier edition. My historic Texas blogs are still being posted on most Friday afternoons.​ FYI: The Doctor's Wife is a prequel to Stein House. And you can follow several of the characters in both books in my new release, Waters Plantation.
Texas Tales makes a great gift for those who love a good nonfiction story that's not too long.

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WATERS  PLANTATION
A sequel to THE DOCTOR'S WIFE and STEIN HOUSE
It is 1875 in Texas, and Albert Waters takes pride in his image––prosperous merchant and plantation owner who freed his wife's slaves before the Civil War and gave them land after her death. Then his son Toby, ready to depart for  Harvard Medical College demands answers. Was his mother a slave?
               Go to Amazon 
Kirkus Review of Waters Plantation

Thanks for your reviews on Amazon and/or Goodreads.

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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AUSTIN AMERICAN STATESMAN ARTICLE ABOUT MYRA (click to view)

A Kirkus STAR review!
NEW EDITION

​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. 

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CLICK ICON to READ REVIEW

Speaking Events for Waters Plantation, The Doctor's Wife, Stein House & Texas Tales:

Dec. 7,​ Miss Ruby's Corral, Goliad Square/Signing
Dec. 14, Bookstop, Galveston/Signing
Jan. 16-Feb. 20, Seminar, "Historic San Antonio", QUEST at UT
Jan. 11, DLI Class, Kerrville, "Germans Come to Texas," Talk/Signing
March 31,UT OLLI LAMP, "Germans Come to Texas," Talking/Signing
June 30, Lone Star Book Festival, Seguin/Signing
Jan. 13-Feb.17 UT OLLI NOVA, "Historic San Antonio," Talking/Signing