The Inspiration for Came A Stranger

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The Story

Maggie Cayton had first come to Wyoming as a seventeen-year-old bride. Together, she and her husband fought impossible odds to build the White Raven Ranch from a wild, untamed land. Then, suddenly Trent was dead, killed by a bullet bought and paid for by Big Ben Tate, a wealthy rancher out to seize her land. Maggie hired Seth Sackett to safeguard her family and her home. But Seth had lived through a darkness no man should ever know, and he hid his bitter secret deep in his soul. His gun was his curse and his salvation. Now he would use it to fight a brutal range war and to protect the woman who made his heart ache with longing for the promise of a love he never dreamed could be his.

Behind the Story

One of my favorite books to write, which also became a favorite of readers, might not have been written at all. I had wanted to set a book in Wyoming and wanted a female protagonist who was more mature. She came to life as Maggie Cayton, a widow with three children and an aging mother to take care of. Maggie needed help to protect the ranch as well as her family from Tate. The decision to turn to a hired gun wasn’t as easy as it might have seemed because Maggie’s late husband had been killed by a hired gun. Still, even though she hated who Seth Sackett was even before he rode onto her ranch, she knew he was a necessary evil.

Maggie sprang to life easily enough, as did her children and mother, but Seth was another story. There was something in his past that I couldn’t find, and until I did, the book had come to a standstill. Then one day while my husband and I were traveling across Wyoming en route to somewhere else, I was doing some brainstorming. I had often found that traveling across our great country was the perfect time to let the muse take over. Who knows where ideas spring from, but I had my “ah-ha” moment when out of the blue I saw Seth take a Bible out of his saddlebag. The wall around him fell down. Here was a gunslinger who killed for a living but still read the Bible. A man who made people fear him but who, when alone, turned to God for redemption. Then the questions began to pour out. Why? What led him here? What were his failings? What were the ghosts he hid? Why had he turned to the gun? Not only did his past take shape, but also the notion that he was a tortured soul who believed he was not worthy of a normal life, and not worthy of the love of Maggie Cayton.

The heart of Came A Stranger was born in that moment of revelation. The plot itself wasn’t a complicated one (wealthy rancher tries to take widow’s land) but it was the people—Seth, Maggie, her children, her mother—that made the book unique. It is common knowledge among writers that there aren’t many plot ideas out there, yet there are thousands of books using those few plots in different ways, different settings, and different eras. What truly makes a memorable story is not necessarily a plot that no one has ever read before, but rather characters, their pasts, their hopes and dreams, and their interactions with one another. These are the things that pull readers in and keep them reading.

To my pleasure, Seth Sackett became one of my most beloved characters among readers. The book also won numerous awards in its publication year, including “Outstanding Hero” from Affaire de Coeur’s Readers Choice Awards, as well as finalist for Best Overall Historical and Best American Historical. You can purchase Came A Stranger from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.