Who Will Be My Valentine? Author Describes Work As `Down-Home Americana’

Terry Kanago, author of today’s concluding episode of “Who Will Be My Valentine?” still recalls the day her first-grade daughter came home from school and asked, “Mom, what did you used to be when you were a real person?”

“It was kind of awkward to say, `Well, I sang in bars and waited tables,”’ says the mother of three. “That doesn’t go too far with kids.”

So the Spokane Valley housewife decided to pursue a dream that had simmered on a back burner - she’d become a writer, “to prove to myself I could still do something.”

That was just a year ago, and already Kanago has two partial manuscripts under consideration by publishers.

“Almost Home” is a historical romance set in 1852 Minnesota Territory. “It’s based loosely on my great-great-grandparents,” Kanago explains. “She was a Luxembourg immigrant, and he was a fur trapper who accidently bought her at an auction in Minneapolis.”

The second novel, “Promises to Keep,” takes place in the aftermath of Confederate Capt. William Quantrill’s raid on Lawrence, Kan., in which 150 people were slaughtered.

“My dad’s family was from Missouri,” says Kanago, “and the Civil War border conflicts have always fascinated me. How did these people put their lives back together and go on?”

Kanago spent about three months researching each book, and another five writing the first manuscript.

Though the aspiring romance author describes her stories as “very sweet, down-home Americana,” she says publishers and readers demand a high degree of historical accuracy.

“We’re held to the same standards as non-fiction writers,” Kanago says, “and if you make a mistake, you hear about it.”