"A Not So Peaceful Journey" by Sandra Merville Hart

June 24, 2023

About the Book

Book: A Not So Peaceful Journey

Author: Sandra Merville Hart

Genre: Christian Historical Romance

Release date: June 13, 2023

Dreams of adventure send him across the country. She prefers to keep her feet firmly planted in Ohio.

Rennie Hill has no illusions about the hardships in life, which is why it’s so important her beau, John Welch, keeps his secure job with the newspaper. Though he hopes to write fiction, the unsteady pay would mean an end to their plans, wouldn’t it?

John Welch dreams of adventure worthy of storybooks, like Mark Twain, and when two of his short stories are published, he sees it as a sign of future success. But while he’s dreaming big with his head in the clouds, his girl has her feet firmly planted, and he can’t help wondering if she really believes in him.

When Rennie must escort a little girl to her parents’ home in San Francisco, John is forced to alter his plans to travel across the country with them. But the journey proves far more adventurous than either of them expect.

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My Thoughts

I had a hard time reading this book. I already didn't really like Rennie very well after reading the other books in the series. I found her whiny and controlling. Reading this book just made me dislike her all the more. She called John's dream foolish and kept trying to get him to do something "sensible". It wasn't until two-thirds of the way through the book that she started to think maybe she should try and encourage John and it wasn't until 90% of the way through that she actually did. It might have been because I identified more with the creative in John that I had a hard time with Rennie, but I really wanted to not finish the book she was so annoying to me. The book is written well and there was a nice biblical faith thread. I liked Livie and the descriptions of the train ride.

About the Author

Sandra Merville Hart, award-winning and Amazon bestselling author of inspirational historical romances, loves to discover little-known yet fascinating facts from American history to include in her stories. Her desire is to transport her readers back in time. She is also a blogger, speaker, and conference teacher. Connect with Sandra on her blog, https://sandramervillehart.wordpress.com/.

More from Sandra

It was fun to invite readers on this book’s journey!

To those who lived in the 1880s, venturing into this newly-settled and largely-unsettled West had become much safer—though not without danger—with the system of railroads already in place. I enjoyed taking readers to Chicago, Omaha, Oakland, Ogden, and Sacramento, as well as frontier towns along the journey such as Cheyenne.

Our heroine is a telegraph operator. She temporarily leaves her job to escort a little girl to her ailing mother in San Francisco.

My research about telegraph jobs taught me quite a bit of terminology.

For example, a clatter arises when another operator “calls.” The call begins with something like “B m—X n”, which means the B m is the station receiving the call and X n is the caller.

B m must signal a reply that she’s ready to receive the call.

The Sounder receives sounds of the alphabet in dots and dashes. Some operators sent messages too rapidly to understand. When this occurs, the receiving operating asks for it again with a Break (she opens her “key” to break the circuit) and interrupts with “Please repeat.”

“G.A. the—” means “Go ahead” and “the” was the last word she understood.

Operators end every message with his/her own private “call” as well as the office’s call and “O.K.” at the end of each message.

Wired Love, which was written by telegraph operator Ella Cheever Thayer in 1879, provided many insights about the job’s daily tasks.

One of them was the lack of privacy on the lines. She can hear the messages sent to other wires but only offices on the same wire. In Wired Love, operators heard messages sent to and from twenty offices.

By the way, the public grew so fascinated with the role of women in telegraphy that it became the topic of romance novels and short stories, creating a new genre called “telegraphic romance” in the latter 1800s. That’s a little-known fun fact for you!

I enjoyed writing this series. I invite you to read the whole “Second Chances” series beginning with A Not So Convenient Marriage, Book 1, A Not So Persistent Suitor, Book 2, and A Not So Peaceful Journey, Book 3.