ABOUT THE BOOK

Celia’s Blue Spring

From Plantation To Frontier

Amid colossal historic forces of the new nation, Celia, the illegitimate white daughter of future Vice President Richard Mentor Johnson, dramatically elopes with a soldier from her father’s War of 1812 militia. Leaving her privileged but marginalized Kentucky plantation existence, she finds a new life in the demanding wild frontiers, but never completely escapes her father’s notorious reputation as the enslaver of his two biracial daughters and their mother. Celia’s hard but rewarding days with a thriving family of six children and her soldier-husband, lead her to confront the deepest conflicts of her time: slavery, continuous wars for land, and extreme social inequalities.

Celia’s Blue Spring: From Plantation To Frontier is a historical fiction novel based on official records, newspapers, speeches, academic publications, and family genealogies. It tells of the romance of Celia and Wesley as imagined by the author, their third-great-granddaughter, who grew up near their Blue Spring on Current River in Missouri.