Who would have guessed that at one time Cheyenne, Wyoming had the highest number of millionaires per capita in the country?
Amanda Cabot discovered that fact and many others while researching her novella The Christmas Star Bride, part of The Twelve Brides of Christmas ebook release this holiday season.
Such a surprising fact spurred her imagination and intrigued her writer’s sensibility.
“Ever since I moved to Cheyenne and learned a bit of its history, I’ve been fascinated by the era of the cattle barons when Cheyenne was the wealthiest city per capita in the country. Not only was Cheyenne the capitol of Wyoming Territory, but it also boasted beautiful parks, the only opera house west of the Mississippi and even had electric lights. What better time and place to set a story?”
The Christmas Star Bride releases as an ebook December 8. You can purchase a copy here.
This is not Amanda’s first visit to nineteenth century Cheyenne. Two of her Westward Winds books, Waiting for Spring and With Autumn’s Return, are both set in Cheyenne during this period.
In this particular story, however, she wanted to tell the story of “an older couple, one who’d suffered through the War Between the States, and how love comes when it’s least expected. Once I realized what Jeremy and Esther had endured, the story practically wrote itself.”
“The Bible verse I chose for this story is Psalm 34:22, “The Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants, and none of them that trust in him shall be desolate.” Both Esther and Jeremy have had desolate periods in their lives, but thanks to their faith in the Lord, they are redeemed.”
Amanda noted that while her characters are not based on real people, “my heroes and heroines frequently embody my personal values. Because I believe in justice and happy endings, readers will find that my protagonists do, too. They’ll also find the recurring theme of the healing power of love, since that’s something I believe in.”
Because she lives in Cheyenne, Amanda often walks the streets her characters inhabited. She’d not personally like to have lived in that time period (too dangerous to be ill), but she would love to have seen the opulent homes now gone.
As to her 12 Brides of Summer sequel, Amanda enjoyed finding a connection between the two stories:
“I had so much fun with Esther and Jeremy that I decided they should play a role in The Fourth of July Bride, and they do. The hero and heroine of that story meet in Esther’s bakery when Jeremy is painting the hero’s portrait. They are, of course, very different from Esther and Jeremy, and their love story takes a far different path from Esther and Jeremy’s.”
The Fourth of July Bride releases just in time for the holiday on July 6, 2015!
Who is Amanda Cabot?
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Amanda Cabot is the author of more than thirty novels, including the CBA bestseller Christmas Roses and Waiting for Spring. A Christmas-time bride herself, Amanda now lives in Cheyenne with her high-school sweetheart husband, where they celebrate a fairly simple Christmas tradition.
For more information about Amanda, please visit her website at http://sff.net/people/amanda.cabot/ or read her blog.
You can also find her on
The Christmas Star Bride can be purchased here.
For those of you who prefer to read on paper rather than in pixels, The Christmas Star Bride is be part of Christmas Wedding Bells, a collection sold in select Walmart stores beginning November 4, 2014.
Amanda had one last word: “I hope everyone who’s reading this has an opportunity to read all of the 12 Brides of Christmas novellas. I’ve had the privilege of reading each of them, and I can tell you that you’re in for a treat.”
Got them all? http://amzn.to/1yuptW2
[…] The Christmas Star Bride by Amanda Cabot: Esther Hathaway lost her one true love at Gettysburg twenty years ago, but she is still willing to celebrate her niece’s wedding by commissioning Jeremy Snyder to paint her portrait. […]