TELEPHONE RIVALS

By Julia Ridgmont

As one of the original Pinkerton Matchmaker authors, I vividly recall a conversation we had regarding telephones and how we laughingly lamented the fact that in our stories, they hadn’t been invented yet. How much more convenient it would have been for our characters to have access to one! But since these stories mostly were taking place in the 1871, and on into 1872, oh well. We—and our characters—would get by.

That conversation took place two years ago when this series was new and gaining popularity. Now, as it begins winding down, we’ve have many cases solved and many couples matched, all at the behest of head agent, Archibald Gordon and his assistant and now wife, Marianne. But the fun isn’t finished yet. There are still a few more Pinkerton Matchmaker stories scheduled to release this summer, and all of them are sure to be exciting—much like the way it was when all of these wonderful gadgets like the telephone were being invented. Imagine if you had lived during that time. Would you have felt the excitement, too, or do you think you might have been wondering if those newfangled things would actually work? For me, probably a little bit of both.

But like Laura Ingalls Wilder, who saw both the horse and buggy days as well as the advent of motor vehicles, I think I would have been awestruck by the ingenuity of the times. This is a facet of life that I enjoy incorporating into my stories, and my upcoming Pinkerton Matchmaker story, An Agent for Sarah, is no exception. This story takes place six years later than the original stories. In 1879, I discovered, Denver, Colorado received telephone lines for the first time. Two recent Harvard graduates, Frederick O. Vaille and Henry R. Walcott, partnered with saloonkeeper Sam Morgan and applied for a franchise of the American Bell Telephone Company (think Alexander Graham Bell) from Boston. They received it, and on February 24, 1879, the Denver Telephone Dispatch Company was born. These Bell-inspired telephones were all the rage, and it seemed that progress was being made to keep family and friends who were long distances apart in touch.

But then a second telephone company sprang up, this one called the Colorado Edison Telephone Company, inspired by—you guessed it—Thomas Edison. His improvements on the transmitters made it possible for the Western Union-owned company to install phones in surrounding areas. Vaille and Walcott didn’t like this, of course, so they sued for infringement on the patent and won. Soon the two companies merged and, over a series of turnovers and share sales, became the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company. A few of the buildings that were used in the intermountain region still exist today and are on the national historic register.

Though not a huge part of the plot in An Agent for Sarah, this rivalry does play a significant role. My couple, Mark Wilson and Sarah Packard, are not your typical Pinkerton couple, either. For one, Sarah isn’t even a Pinkerton agent yet and doesn’t become one until the end of the story. Mark, her friend from childhood, is dismayed when she becomes engaged to another man. Since Mark and Sarah are both from Virginia (they were minor characters in An Agent for Jessica), I had to figure out a way to get them both to Denver. I accomplished this by making Sarah engaged to a man from Denver who had gone back East to buy horses from their renowned horse-breeding business. Mark, on the other hand, is so distraught over this development that at his mentor’s urging, who used to be a Pinkerton agent under Archie, Mark moves to Denver to seek employment there. Little does he know, nor is he prepared, when he and another agent are assigned to catch the person who’s trying to sabotage Sarah’s wedding.

How does the telephone rivalry play into this? Well, the groom’s father is a magnate, and he has his hand in a lot of pies. One of them is the newfangled telephone. When an unknown enemy starts using guerilla-style tactics to stop the wedding, he thinks it’s his rival. But that is only one of the strange things that is happening to his family. Will Mark and Sarah be able to uncover the real culprit in time?

An Agent for Sarah releases on June 5, 2020. It’s available as a preorder if you’d like to grab your copy now. That way it will download immediately on release day. Talk about modern conveniences! I hope you will enjoy Mark and Sarah’s story. They really have waited a long time to be together. When he rescued her in An Agent for Jessica, readers clamored for their love story. I’m happy that it’s finally here!

How Quickly Times Changed!!

I’m currently writing my first “modern” book set in 1881. It’s such a thrilling time period! Until now, my most “modern” time period was the 1850s. It’s shocking how much technology changed in those twenty to thirty years! What a thrill it would have been to live then. But trying to keep up would have been a challenge and makes for interesting character development for some. A great time period for a historical writer <grin>

For example, in my current manuscript, my heroine is answering the newly invented telephone for the hero’s industrial company. His company is involved in running the wires on the streets for the newly developed electricity. And heroine’s mother hates all this modernizing and didn’t want the wires coming to her house. Thankfully, her husband insisted that for the future property value of their house, they had to at least have the wires run while the company was working on their street. My heroine tries to reason with her mother by asking how she would like to be without the indoor plumbing that they now take for granted but had only been run through their city in the last thirty or so years.

These are things that we take for granted nowadays, but it’s fascinating to think about how some

might have resisted these “newfangled gadgets”!

Even transportation! When I was writing my Proxy Brides books, I had to keep researching just how far West the train would have gotten in the year I wanted. Connecting the East and West coasts by train travel changed everything! And in the twenty-five years between my eras, train travel times shrunk exponentially. When they first connected the coasts, it took two weeks or more to make the trip which was still extremely fast compared to travelling by ox pulled wagons, but by the 1880s it only takes a few days!

Fortunes were gained and lost even more quickly with the advancement of technology. Those who could adapt, thrived. Those who could not, lost out. This is a thrilling time period for historical authors. I personally read and write for the escapism of it. Because of that, all my books have an extreme. Usually extreme wealth – the hero is a duke or an earl or a wealthy land owner or struck it rich with the gold rush. I think the 1880s will allow for many extremes as so many were learning and discovering new and improved things.

If you want to stay abreast of when this particular book releases, please sign up for my newsletter or join my Facebook group.

In the meantime, please enjoy one of my Proxy Brides books, A Bride for Ransom:

They find themselves married...but can they be a family?

Ransom is just looking for a mother for his orphaned niece. The fact that she’s from Boston is a bonus. Their arrangement allows him to get out of town.

Hannah needs a husband. Her new name will protect her siblings. The fact that he lives in the back of beyond gives them a place to hide. She hadn’t counted on him being so appealing.

But what happens when they realize how very permanent their proxy marriage truly is?

Available from Amazon, included in your KU subscription.