Catherine Ulrich Brakefield: Let’s Chat!

Welcome, everyone!

We’re honored to welcome Catherine Ulrich Brakefield to our circle this week.

A longtime Michigan resident, Catherine lives with her husband of 45 years and their Arabian horses in the picturesque hills of Addison Township. She has two adult children and loves traveling the byroads across America and spoiling her two handsome grandsons and two beautiful granddaughters.

Catherine is an award-winning author of inspirational historical romance and has also written two pictorial history books and numerous published articles. She loves “to tell America’s story one truth at a time.” Her four-book Destiny series is rising in popularity with nationwide book clubs. The series includes Swept into Destiny, Destiny’s Whirlwind, Destiny of Heart, and Waltz with Destiny.

Catherine Ulrich Brakefield: God’s Survival Manual

Have you ever noticed that people experience and react differently to the news on television and their everyday hardships? Take, for instance, the Coronavirus. This has swept through our country with a vengeance. President Trump often calls this the invisible enemy.

Coronavirus invaded our workplaces, homes, and killed our loved ones. This invisible enemy lurks in the shadows of the present. And it cripples the corridors of our future. No one knows what to expect.

Our way of life has drastically changed: Catherine Ulrich Brakefield

How long will this virus play havoc in our families, communities, and lifestyles? Do we know? Will life as we knew it five months ago, return to normalcy?

What we do know is this. We know what our parents, grandparents and their parents endured and victoriously survived to birth another American generation. How did they do it? Beneath the insurmountable odds of their circumstances, how did they survive?

One reader wrote me saying: “I keep remembering the issues and events from your novels.”

I do too! Especially those sicknesses and emotional and physical deprivations relatable to the pandemic we face today. So, how did my characters over a span of a hundred years manage to survive and thrive? Was it through political manipulation and complaining? Pilfering and hoarding?  What would you do if the following hardships, political manipulations, and racial discrimination happened to you?

History binds us with one solitary cord of truth: Destiny Series by Catherine U. Brakefield

1857-1866. In Swept into Destiny, during the Antebellum Era, Ben McConnell is faced with two alternatives: starve or take a life-threatening job dredging out the snake-infested swampland at a plantation estate located in heart of Tennessee.

He left his home in Ireland in search of a new start, a new life, a little piece of land. Believing he’d find his dream in America, he got to America’s shores only to learn that he and his kindred weren’t wanted. “No Irish Need Apply.” Those signs were everywhere! What would you have done?

1898-1906. Destiny’s Whirlwind brings to culmination Ben’s life-long dream. Only, it is his only daughter, a feisty brunette named Collina who sees this to fruition.

During the Gibson Era, it will take the handsome Rough Rider Franklin Long to tame her. But Collina has a few lessons to learn along the way.

1917-1932. In Destiny of Heart, Collina’s sister Ruby McConnell Meir leaves with her husband, Stephen, and son to the prairies of Colorado to homestead a section of land. They hoped that the drier climate might heal her husband’s strange illness.

That did not conclude the hardships for Ruby, Collina, or Maggie. In 1929 a new disaster plagued the land, the Great Depression. How did these women survive with no money or food? The flapper of the Roaring Twenties fell like a wounded eagle into the want Maggie remembered of the 1860s. She comforted her family with these words: “I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken.”

Destiny of Heart won first place in The Maxwell Medal 2019 fiction category.

1941-1944. Waltz with Destiny “The jewel of the Destiny series.” The 1940s was a period in American history often referred to as the Big Band Era. It was also a time of grueling work with factories and workers scrambling for a piece of the American Dream. After the Great Depression, work was still hard to come by with little monetary compensation. Seeing Hitler and his Nazis marching across Europe, many a voice echoed the deep undercurrent and rumblings of anxiety.

No one knew what America’s fun-loving youths would have to endure in World War II or if they could even beat the Axis powers back. Japan thought Americans were too soft and not much more than playboys, and they wouldn’t be able to fight—at least not against their trained professionals.

Survival Techniques: Catherine Ulrich Brakefield

As you can see through a few of the characters in my stories, they lived, endured, fought and died during the pivotal years of our nation’s history. What survival techniques worked and what did not? You will be surprised to learn that through the pages of the Destiny Series, practical horse sense with a well-educated knowledge of God’s Survival Manual carried my characters through their sickness and deprivation, births and deaths—to the end of their destiny. Through the worst Satan can throw at you, keep faith—God will work His victorious victory.

“For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord!” Romans 8:38,39 NKJV

Where to Find Catherine Ulrich Brakefield

Website: www.catherineulrichbrakefield.com/

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Amazon Author Page: https://amzn.to/2X9r5nT 

Author Facebook: https://bit.ly/2ZeJmD2

Goodreads: https://bit.ly/3dVDx1j 

BookBub: https://bit.ly/2Tk0zqO

YouTube: https://bit.ly/2X6LNoG

Blog: Hope, Hearts, and Hoofbeats: https://bit.ly/3fZABmg

Twitter: https://bit.ly/3cE1BFT

Linkedin: https://bit.ly/2WIKbCq

Other Works by Catherine Ulrich Brakefield

Wilted Dandelions won Honorable Mention in the Eric Hoffer Book Award and Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award in 2016.  

She has written two pictorial history books:  Images of America: The Lapeer Area, and Images of America: Eastern Lapeer County. 

Her short stories have been published in Guidepost Books True Stories of Extraordinary Answers to Prayer,  Unexpected Answers and Desires of Your Heart. From Baker Books, Revell, The Dog Next Door, Horse of my Heart, Second-Chance DOGS, and  Horse of my Dreams. From CrossRiver Media Publishers, The Benefit Package and Abba’s Promise. And from Bethany House Publishers, Jesus Talked to me Today.

Catherine has been featured in numerous periodicals over the last thirty years, Michigan History and Southern Writers Magazine to name two. She is a member of Heart of American Christian Writers Network (HACWN) and American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW) and is president of the ACFW Great Lakes Chapter. She loves to tell America’s story one truth at a time through her speaking engagements.

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Dear Lord, please bless each word Catherine writes for You.
~ For Jesus’ sake