Follow the Stars Home

Issue: August 2024

Diane McPhail

Local author Diane McPhail is launching her third book, Follow the Stars Home, at the Hudson Library on August 21 at 12:30 P.M. and also at Albert Carlton-Cashiers Community Library on August 24 at 2:00 P.M.

Diane is an acclaimed author, but she is also a spellbinding storyteller, so joining her for this launch is the perfect introduction to this gripping tale of her intrepid heroine, Lydia Latrobe Roosevelt.

This biographical novel is a well-researched and captivatingly written reimagining of the life of Lydia, a headstrong independent young woman eight months pregnant and with a toddler in tow, who accompanies her husband, Nicholas Roosevelt, on the first steamboat voyage to conquer the Mississippi River. a journey that revolutionized travel and trade and opened the West to expansion.

Lydia was the daughter of one of the architects of the United States Capital Building. Nicholas Roosevelt was her father’s business colleague with whom, much to her father’s chagrin, Lydia fell in love and married at age 17. He designed and piloted the New Orleans, the first steamboat to navigate the Mississippi River. It is this treacherous maiden voyage that is the focus of the book.

The couple prepared for the steamboat journey by spending their honeymoon traveling on a fact-finding trip aboard a primitive flatboat along the same route. That journey had its share of complications ending with them having to travel from Natchez to New Orleans by rowboat when their flatboat sank.

Undeterred they proceeded with their planned steamboat voyage to make the historic trip from Pittsburg, down the Ohio River to the Mississippi, encountering the treacherous Falls of Ohio, a 60-foot drop considered unnavigable by such a large boat, the hostile conditions of the Mississippi River, and the powerful New Madrid earthquakes, a series of over 2,000 earthquakes, three of which were magnitude 8 or greater. During the voyage, Lydia gave birth to her second child.

When asked what sparked her interest in this fascinating tale Diane says that the idea grew from a presentation she gave to a group of 60 gentlemen. Recognizing that this was no ordinary book club, Diane delved into her family memories of a childhood near the Mississippi River thinking of a subject that would be of interest to men. Realistic tales of a perilous river beyond the rather romantic Mark Twain versions we usually think of seemed to fit the bill perfectly.

The presentation was a success and the seeds of Follow the Stars Home were planted. Diane’s deep family roots along the Mississippi and her commitment to authenticity and accuracy make her the perfect person to tell this engaging story.

More good news for her readers is that she is already hard at work on her fourth novel set in 1700 France and early Louisiana.