Sylvia Ann McLain was born in New Orleans and grew up in rural Saint Tammany Parish, Louisiana. She lived in New Mexico for four years before moving to Oklahoma, where she pursued her career as a college business professor.
History has always been her first love. Striving to bring the past to life in her writing, she has authored four historical novels about the Old South: “Spinning Jenny” published in 2016, “Jenny is Free” in 2019, “Jenny’s Dreams” in 2021, and “What Margot Saw” in 2023.
She lives on the bank of a wooded creek in northeastern Oklahoma, where a fox and a coyote sometimes drop by. She is hard at work on her next novel.
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Sylvia Ann McLain was born in New Orleans and grew up in rural Saint Tammany Parish, Louisiana. She lived in New Mexico for four years before moving to Oklahoma, where she pursued her career as a college business professor.
History has always been her first love. Striving to bring the past to life in her writing, she has authored four historical novels about the Old South: “Spinning Jenny” published in 2016, “Jenny is Free” in 2019, “Jenny’s...
“I guess I’ll name you Jenny, something I can say easy. That was my mammy’s name, anyway. Jenny. You be Jenny from now on...”
Cornelius Carson’s mother cautioned him never to own slaves, but in 1830s Louisiana, land and slaves are proof of a man’s worth. At 23 Cornelius is ambitious, and in love. He owns...
Natchez, 1841. As a slave girl, Jenny has always yearned for freedom, but when her master Cornelius Carson abruptly sets her free and hands her a steamboat ticket to free soil in Ohio, she is completely alone, and her future is filled with dangers. Then an old acquaintance, Walker Jackson, persuades her to return with him to Carefree, the...
At the age of 22, Jenny has lived a lifetime of experiences. She was a child kidnapped into slavery, and then freed. She’s been married and widowed, and she’s become a mother. But when an ambitious sheriff comes after her for an old crime, she flees the safety of her home at the Natchez estate known as Carefree and...