| My very first book, Easter Fires, told about German
settlers coming to Texas and making friends with the Comanche Indians. In Opa's Stories,
the little boy in the first book is now a grandfather (Opa) telling his grandson about
when he was a little boy. The events described in both stories are true. They come
from books about early Fredericksburg families.
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I wrote this book because first graders at a Houston
school asked for a "sequence" to Easter Fires. They didn't know the word
"sequel," but they knew a "sequence" came next. I knew that many
interesting things happened after the town of Fredericksburg was founded, but they didn't
fit in my first story. As part of the treaty, the Comanches had been invited to come to
Fredericksburg. When they came, there were unusual occurrences. DIfferent
families preserved those stories, and that made it easy to write this book.
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| I have often said that I cannot make up stories as good as
the real ones I find. Who would ever have thought that an Indian chief would ask for
a warm room for his wife to have her baby, then take that baby and the settler's wife out
to the creek to baptize the child in icy water? Well, he did, and then he gave Mrs.
Specht a silver conch off his braid. I didn't make that up!
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The artist surprised me with incredible cut-paper pictures -- my
favorite is the one where the woman is in the garden with the watermelons and the Indians
are on the other side of the stone wall with a Mexican child.
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| It was the artist who suggested that the book
be shaped like a Sunday House. The settlers had farms out in the country, but they built
these little houses in Fredericksburg so they would have a place to stay when they came
into town for church. It's been more than 150 years since the town was founded, but some
of these tiny houses are still standing.
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By the way, when the town celebrated its 150th
anniversary in 1996, I was there -- and so were Comanche Indians from Oklahoma.
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| This was a fun book to do. |
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