Sweetbriar Summer (#4 Seattle Sweetbriar Series/Brenda Wilbee) - Softcover

Wilbee, Brenda

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0800756193 ISBN 13: 9780800756192

Publisher: Fleming H Revell Co, 1997

Synopsis

Summer 1854 finds Louisa and David, and baby Emily Inez, on their claim (today's Seattle Center), caught up in the firstfruits of their labor and basking in their hard-won hopes and dreams. New settlers, new industry, added shipping lines, gold beyond the mountains--everything adds up to strong economics times. Yet beneath the heady air of prosperity runs a current of fear--rumors of Indian unrest ominously rumble.

In the middle of everything comes word that David's brother James is dying. Will Louisa and David abandon their improvements and rush to his bedside in far-away Oregon? Can they even make it in time?

About this title

From the Publisher:

History & Love Continue To Unfold In Seattle's Early Days! 600,000 SOLD!

Sweetbriar Summer is Brenda Wilbee's fourth book in her Seattle Sweetbriar Series--the true story of Louisa Boren and David Denny, Seattle's founding family.

From the Author:

NOTE: Sweetbiar Spring, #4 in the Seattle Sweetbiar Series, is no longer in print. I will be releasing an expanded and updated version that will include new information and author sketches of Seattle's pioneers and buildings from her earliest days.

Sweetbriar Summer opens upon the controversial murder trials of Seattle's Third District Court. The remaining story is the consequence of what happened at those trials. Because I've been so exacting in my study of the Boren and Denny families and feel like I know their characters well, it's been a longtime puzzle for me as to why contemporary texts like to point out that during those trials Arthur Denny and David Denny--for the one and only time in their lives--voted against their consciences. In my research of untold documents and manuscripts and published texts, I'd not come across anything that remotely suggested these men had EVER ignored their consciences. The closest reference I could find to the fact that they may have came from Arthur Denny's granddaughter, Roberta Frye Watt. In her very accurate history, FOUR WAGONS WEST, Ms. Watt reported that Arthur and David had both served on the trial juries. Yet there were several trials, and she did not make any statement as to WHICH of those juries David and Arthur might have sat on. Had historians simply jumped to the wrong conclusions? And subsequent writers, taking the wrong cues, perpetuated a myth? Sweetbriar Summer is cornerstoned on these trials. I, therefore, could not begin writing until I'd resolved once and for all whether or not David and Arthur--both of whom I'd learned to trust in regard to their integrity--had, indeed, been guilty of ignoring the truth. My suspicion was that they had not. But if they had, I wanted to know what internal struggle had led these men into making a decision that was so uncharacteristic of their personalities and faith.
My search took me many interesting places. I finally found help at the Puget Sound branch of Washington State Archives in Seattle, Washington, housed in a few back rooms of a terribly dilapidated and abandoned junior high school. There, the librarian unearthed for me the King County Court Journals of 1854. And there, written in antiquated script and faded ink, were the jury lists. Everyone's names--and the trials under which they served.
It is my hope that with the publication of Sweetbriar Summer the truth of those trials--and the men involved--can now be made clear.

About this edition

• Publisher: Fleming H Revell Co
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0800756193
• ISBN 13: 9780800756192
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 288