Welcome!
The story behind A Place for Annika
When I lived in New Braunfels, Texas, I became fascinated by its history. It’s the only town in America founded by European nobility. A group of Hessian nobles (Germany wasn’t united as a country in the 1840s) formed a society for emigration called the Adelsverein as a response to poverty and overpopulation. As I continued researching, I became convinced that my New Braunfels series should begin in Braunfels, Germany.
For this novel, I wanted to see the area I was writing about. Although the pandemic delayed my plans, I finally visited central Germany in April 2023 with my dad. I had to make a lot of revisions after the trip because I learned so much. For example, the women’s chores were different from what I’d envisioned. They didn’t use cookstoves but cooked over open hearths. To fetch water, they used wooden yokes, whether they lived in town or the country.
The fictional Annika Lange is born into this world. Having lost her mother, she’s yearning for a feeling of cozy belonging, gemütlichkeit in German. She eventually finds it, but not in the way she expects.
In a nod to my heritage, I’ve gifted Annika’s family with a two-hundred-year-old antique passed down through my family. It’s a cabbage-shaped sugar bowl that traveled from Virginia to Missouri by wagon and has the scars to prove it. My mother would have liked its inclusion in my latest novel, but like Annika’s Mutter, mine has passed away. She died in 2022 while I was writing this book. An avid reader, she always supported my writing and read my drafts. I miss her and dedicate A Place for Annika to her.