Charlotte Hinger
Novelist and Kansas Historian
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Historical Fiction and Non-fiction
Nicodemus: Post-Reconstruction Politics and Racial Justice in Western Kansas
Westerners International Best Book Award 2nd Place
2017 Award of Merit--Solomon Valley Hwy 24 Alliance
A new history of the most prominent all-black town on the Great Plains.
Rich in detail and carefully researched, Charlotte Hinger's fine study reveals the paradoxical race relations that African Americans experienced, the voice of ordinary people, the role that American Indians played in assisting the earlist black settlers, and their quest for full equality and civil rights.
Albert S. Broussard--author of Expectations of Equality: A History of Black Westerners
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In this unprecedented full-length scholarly study of Nicodemus, Charlotte Hinger shows that the experiences of obtaining land, recruiting residents, building communities, protecting economic and political interests, grappling with the moral headace of helping refugees--all on the harsh, lonely prairies of Western Kansas--drew African Americans into the same divergent patterns of racial uplift, social just, and radicalism with which the would contend in the century and a half that followed.
James N. Leiker--author of Racial Borders: Black Soldiers Along the Rio Grande
Come Spring
Medicine Pipe-Bearers Award--Western Writers of America
Spur Award Finalist-Western Writers of America
A powerful drama about the conflict between the homesteaders hewing a perilous existence from the stubborn sod and the ambitious and often unscrupulous town builders with their secret ties to the burgeoning railroads. Amid this backdrop is the passionate love story of a fragile aristocratic newly wed Aura Lee, who is shocked by the rigor of the Kansas plains and her strong but dangerously self-righteous husband, Daniel. Together they stand against the challenges of the land, determined to stay together and retain their property. But there are those who are just as determined to tear the couple apart and gain their land.
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This novel has intriguing info about the shadier wheels and deals of town-founding and the birth of the fighting Grange" --Kirkus Reviews
The Healer's Daughter
Kansas Notable Book Award
Will Rogers Silver Medallion
Finalist High Plains Book Award
Starred Review Library Journal
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​Bethany Herbert, daughter of a legendary healer, leaves the South for the new black community of Nicodemus, Kansas. Despite the hardships, the community comes to love the prairie. Bethany's mother, Queen Bess, comes to Nicodemus, as does the handsome lawyer Jed Talbot, who galvanizes the settlers. Bethany resists the call of her heart because Queen Bess warns her the best healers are chaste and single. When the Herbert women's medical procedures are undermined, Bethany nearly succumbs to Queen Bess's call for total segregation from the whites Bess hates. Sinister forces come into play through white politicians seeking the black vote, and sabotage by a woman within Nicodemus who yearns for the old color hierarchy.
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A remarkable, moving historical fiction on a topic given little attention, the settlement of free African-Americans in alarmingly hostile territory.--Historical Novel Society
Mary's Place
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Will Rogers Gold Medallion
Finalist: Western Writers Spur Award
Finalist: Colorado Book Award
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Iron and Mary Barrett’s farming family is rural royalty, their success symbolized by a magnificent three-story house, Mary’s Place. Years in the building, the house is a testament to Mary’s grit and organizational abilities. But when bank examiners apply new ratings for agricultural loans in the 1980s, the family’s belief that its prosperity is a natural outcome of hard work is sent reeling.
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Powerful, touching and real, Mary's Place is a deeply woven understanding of the human spirit, its strength and its will to survive.—Milana Marsenich, Roundup Magazine
