The Brushstroke Legacy (35 page)

“But now you can see her face.”

Ragni nodded. “But I want to see her smiling. She says in here that she and Eloise taught Joseph Peterson to smile.” Ragni tapped the ragged little book.

A voice so strong everyone must have been able to hear it spoke inside her:
Go look in a mirror.

The next morning as her mother placed the bead-trimmed circlet and full veil on her head, Ragni did look in the mirror. In spite of the trembling that had set on her since sunrise, she smiled. And was sure she saw an answering smile from a faint form behind her mother—five generations of women, including Erika, linked by this cabin. Her great-grandmother’s “sacred scribbles,” as she had called them later in the journal, coming to life these generations later, blessing yet another union in this simple cabin. Erika handed her Nilda’s journal along with a single yellow rose from the bush by the cabin.

“I wish Daddy was here to give me away. He hasn’t met Paul.” Ragni fought the tears that threatened to overflow.

“I know, but I’ll do my best to be a good substitute.” Judy sniffed and dabbed at her eyes. “We’re both going to look like raccoons.” She used her handkerchief to blot out any dark spots below her daughter’s eyes, then her own. “There…all right?”

“Yes, thank you.” Ragni hugged her mother one more time, listened for the change in the guitar chords, and taking her mother’s arm, stepped through the door after Susan and Erika, the Clauson women together. Paul waited for her. Her new life was about to begin. “Thank you, Grandma Nilda. I’ll do my best.”

The more books I write, the more I realize how many people play a part in the creation and the production of the story to get it into the hands of readers. There is no way I can say thank you to all of them, because I don’t know all the production people. What I do know is that we are all striving to make each book the very best it can be. Therefore, I thank you all.

Those I do know include all who helped with the thinking, planning, and writing. Brainstorming is my first step. That started the first time I saw the cabin on the banks of the Little Missouri River near Medora, North Dakota. The story seemed to flow out of that cabin, and I wrote down as much of it as I could. Books don’t always start this way.

Dudley Delffs of WaterBrook really encouraged me to write this story and explore the need for artists of all kinds to do our art—as our calling and regarding what happens to us when we don’t do it. Thanks, Dudley.

Betty Slade and Sherri Lou Casey, watercolor teachers with true servant hearts, thank you for expanding my world.

To Kathleen Wright, Woodeene Koenig Bricker, Chelley Kitz-miller, my Round Robin friends, and all idea people and encouragers: I’d be lost without you.

Thanks to Rae Lynn Schafer, researcher, and to Beth Clyde of the Cowboy Cafe, reader. Beth and Kevin even opened the Cowboy to feed us when we got snowed in in Medora in October. And thanks to Mary and Doug of the Western Edge Bookstore who are always founts of information and who were our hosts during the blizzard. I am not accustomed to blizzards but got reminded of what they are like.

To Cecile, my assistant who does far more than her job description ever said; to my agent, Deidre Knight; to those helpful folks at WaterBrook, especially my editor, Shannon Hill, and Laura Wright, who makes sure every word is right: thanks is never enough to say. But I sure do mean it.

I have the greatest readers in the entire world. Thanks for letting me know what you think and then telling others about my books. You’re the best.

To God be the glory.

Lauraine

Lauraine Snelling is a member of the more-than-two-million-books-in-print club, but once she was a mother of three teenagers with a dream to write “horse books for kids.” Her Norwegian heritage spurred her to craft
An Untamed Land
, volume one of the Red River of the North family saga, which, due to reader demand, spun off Return to Red River, a trilogy following more of the Bjorklund family Daughters of Blessing continues the saga. Three more historical series came next, one set during the Civil War that traces the journey of a young woman leading Thoroughbreds across the country to safety and a new series called Dakotah Treasures that follows the birth of the town of Medora, North Dakota.

Writing about real issues within a compelling story is a hallmark of Lauraine’s style, shown in her contemporary romances and women’s fiction, which has probed the issues of forgiveness, loss, domestic violence, and cancer.
The Healing Quilt
explores the relationship of four diverse women who come together to supply their community with a much needed mammogram machine. In
The Way of Women
, three families cope with the aftermath of a volcanic eruption.

All told, she has had over fifty books published—she thinks. She’s not sure. She’d rather write them than count them. Lauraine’s work has been translated into Norwegian, Danish, and German, and produced as books on tape.

Awards have followed Lauraine’s dedication to telling a good story: the Silver Angel Award for
An Untamed Land
and a Romance Writers of America Golden Heart for
Song of Laughter.

Helping others reach their writing dream is the reason Lauraine teaches both at writer’s conferences across the country and at her home in the Tehachapi Mountains of California. She mentors others through book doctoring and with her humorous and playful Writing Great Fiction tape set. Lauraine also produces material on query letters and other aspects of the writing process.

Her readers clamor for more books more often, and Lauraine would like to comply, if only her ever-growing flower gardens didn’t call quite so loudly over the soothing rush of the water fountains in her backyard, or if the hummingbirds weren’t quite so entertaining. Lauraine and her husband, Wayne, have two grown sons, a daughter already gone home, a cockatiel named Bidley, a basset hound named Chewey, and a possible Rummikub addiction.

T
HE
B
RUSHSTROKE
L
EGACY
P
UBLISHED BY
W
ATER
B
ROOK
P
RESS
12265 Oracle Boulevard, Suite 200
Colorado Springs, Colorado 80921
A division of Random House Inc.

Scripture quotations and paraphrases are taken from the King James Version and the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

The characters and events in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to actual persons or events is coincidental.

Copyright © 2006 by Lauraine Snelling

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Snelling, Lauraine.
        The brushstroke legacy : a novel / Lauraine Snelling. — 1st ed.
                p. cm.
        eISBN: 978-0-307-55053-8
     1. Advertising executives—Fiction. 2. Chicago (Ill.)—Fiction. 3. Painting—Fiction.
I. Title.
        PS3569.N39B78    2006
         813′.54—dc22

2006013463

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