Along the Trail follows a young woman traveling westward with her family in search of new beginnings on the Oregon Trail, who learns about resilience, love, and the freedom and cost of such a dangerous journey. What was the inspiration for the setup of your story?

I grew up in Kansas City, MO, which is about 20 minutes from the town of Independence, where the Westward Trails began. It was a point of interest for me, starting all the way back in elementary school. I found everything about it fascinating: the adventure of it all, the beauty of the wilderness, and the extreme grit and hope that the people of that time had to possess in order to even begin. But I also wanted to make sure to highlight the drudgery, the discomforts, and the dangers that they faced along the way. I didn’t want it to be overly romanticized, as that would downplay the magnitude of the obstacles that the travelers faced, which was the opposite of what I hoped to do during the story.

Winnie is a charismatic character that readers get to watch figure out who she is and what path she wants to follow. Were you able to achieve everything you wanted with her character in the novel?

I doubt any author can ever say they achieved everything they wanted with a character, haha. Well-developed characters often seem to move through their story on their own, and it’s all the writer can do to keep up with them! But honestly, I wanted Winnie to be representative of her time and her circumstances. That said, she had to be open-minded enough to recognize that some of her initial reactions to things she encountered during their journey were not justified reactions – rather, that some of them came as a result of fear and not from her own experience. I do think that she’s a relatable character, and even an admirable one. Not everyone will so readily admit to being wrong as she does. Not everyone chooses personal growth, but Winnie does.

What were some themes that were important for you to explore in this book?

I think one of the biggest themes for me was that the setting (thousands of miles of wilderness) was often the protagonist, but also sometimes acted as the antagonist. Such an environment was brutal and beautiful. Stunning, and stifling. It had to flow and change along the way, and at other times, remain so similar and vast as to seem unconquerable, like the travelers were barely making progress at all. It was important to me that the setting inspire both a sense of wonder and a sense of foreboding.

Another theme that I hope comes across is that of resilience, enduring hope, and personal growth. The characters experience some grueling physical challenges, and also some tough mental ones – things with the potential to break anyone’s spirit. But instead of turning on one another, or even turning back, they come together to form a community and rely on each other in times of need. I didn’t want my characters to be stealing from one another, or harming each other – I wanted them to represent the best of humanity, to help rather than harm, wherever possible. Perhaps that’s a bit naive, but there’s enough doom and gloom in the world these days; I chose to highlight human resilience and hope rather than focus primarily on division.

That’s not to say there aren’t some nuanced perceptions that the characters have to overcome to achieve personal growth, because that’s one of Winnie’s main character arcs. But she gets through it because she has the introspective honesty and open-minded nature to acknowledge a prejudice in her world, analyze the validity of it through what she experiences (rather than what she’s told by others), and come out the other side with her own opinion. And I hope that journey shines through for readers.

Will this novel be the start of a series, or are you working on a different story?

I’m seriously considering writing a sequel and making it a duology. There is a lot left to explore with the Hayes family once they reach their destination, and also a lot that I’d like to expand on with Mae and some of the other strong secondary characters.

Even though their journey ended once the overland travelers chose a spot to settle, their hardships did not. It was grueling work to build a homestead, to make it through winter in an unfamiliar territory. There’s a lot to discover there that I think would make for a great second novel.

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