Blog Tour and Giveaway: Texas Reclaimed by Sherry Shindelar

About the Book

Book: Texas Reclaimed

Author: Sherry Shindelar

Genre: Christian Historical Romance

Release Date: February 3, 2026

Can love blossom between a woman haunted by her family’s past and a man haunted by the trauma of war?

Cora Scott is determined to hold onto her family’s Texas ranch and provide a stable home for her young half brother, Charlie, despite the mounting challenges of post-Civil War frontier life. But when a scheming creditor threatens to seize their land, she must accept help from Ben McKenzie, a former Yankee soldier sent by her late brother. Though Ben’s generosity and strength draw her, the man’s private struggle she stumbles upon—too reminiscent of her father’s alcoholism—makes her question whether she can trust her heart to him.

Ben McKenzie arrives in Texas intent on fulfilling his promise to his dying friend to protect Cora and Charlie. While using his inheritance to save their ranch, he battles not only the loss of their cattle but also his dependency on laudanum—a medicine that turned into a curse after his imprisonment at Andersonville. As his feelings for Cora deepen, he must choose between his promise to his father to take over their Philadelphia newspaper and his growing dream of a life with Cora in Texas.

When a Comanche warrior begins courting Cora and Ben’s responsibilities in Philadelphia threaten to tear them apart, they must decide if their love is strong enough to overcome their fears and forge a future together on the Texas frontier.

 

Click here to get your copy!

 

About the Author

Originally from Tennessee, Sherry loves to take her readers into the past. She is an avid student of the Civil War and the Old West. When she is not busy writing, she is an English professor working to pass on her love of writing to her students. Sherry is an award-winning writer: 2023 Genesis finalist, Maggie finalist, and Crown finalist. She currently resides in Minnesota with her husband of thirty-eight years. She has three grown children and three grandchildren.

 

 

 

More from Sherry

Texas Reclaimed is a story of victory, redemption, and the rebirth of trust. It is a story of courage and of freedom from the chains of the past and the chains of addiction. It is a story that honors the Civil War soldiers who survived their wounds, only to return home to fight another battle: dependency on the opioid-based medicines that had helped save their lives.

I first heard of laudanum when I watched the movie Amazing Grace about William Wilberforce’s eighteen-year battle to end the slave trade in Great Britain. Wilberforce played a pivotal role in ending the slave trade and eventually slavery itself in Britain by speaking, campaigning, and introducing bills into the British parliament. However, Wilberforce was also addicted to laudanum, a tincture of opium.

It wasn’t his intention to become dependent upon a drug. A doctor prescribed it to him when he was twenty-nine years old for ulcerative colitis and other health ailments. Laudanum was used to treat a number of health issues and ailments in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, and no one, including doctors, had much understanding about addiction and dependency. The word addiction didn’t even exist as we use it today. But the soul-deep struggle was very real for too many people, even a man of faith like Wilberforce.

Addiction is pernicious, and laudanum took its toll on Wilberforce. He suffered physically, mentally, and spiritually from its poisonous effects.

Years later, I learned that even some of the nineteenth-century authors that I admire, such as Louisa May Alcott and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, struggled with laudanum dependency, as well.

In the nineteenth century, doctors and the public viewed opium, in its various forms, as an essential medical tool. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers were wounded in the American Civil War, and many more suffered from debilitating and potentially life-threatening illnesses. A Civil War medical manual, quoted in Dr. Jonathan Jones’s Opium Slavery, states that opiates were as “important to the surgeon as gunpowder to the ordinance [military weapons].”

My heart went out to Wilberforce, the tens of thousands of soldiers, and others enslaved to laudanum or other substances through no fault of their own. For many, once infected, it could be a lifelong battle, one that many did not win on their own.  But there were victories.

And I love to write about soul-deep struggles and victories.

My hero, Ben McKenzie, is a Federal Cavalry captain captured and imprisoned in the notorious Andersonville Prison Camp. He barely survives the harsh conditions of the camp. His best friend, Jeb Scott, does not. Ben makes a death bed promise to his friend that he will look after Jeb’s mother and sister who live in Texas.

Ben aims to keep that promise, but the medical treatment that he receives after his release from prison camp leaves him dependent upon laudanum. My story starts a year later. Ben determines to break the chains that are eating away at his self-respect. He throws away his bottle of medicine and heads to Texas to keep his promise.

I asked a friend of mine about his own deliverance from addiction. He had this to say, “It was a lifetime ago, my addiction was strong, but my pain was stronger. I’ve lost so much in my life, but then I found that God’s love was deep, and He was even bigger to forgive. Out of His mercy He set me free, and through His grace He healed me from my past.”-Rev. Mark Little Elk

That is my prayer for all of those who struggle. And I look forward to sharing Ben McKenzie’s story with you in Texas Reclaimed.

Blog Stops

Babbling Becky L’s Book Impressions, February 14

Books Less Travelled, February 15

Books You Can Feel Good About, February 15

Betti Mace, February 16

lakesidelivingsite, February 17

Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, February 18

Texas Book-aholic, February 19

Bizwings Blog, February 20

Holly’s Book Corner, February 20

For Him and My Family, February 21

Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, February 22

Locks, Hooks and Books, February 23

Lyssa Loves Books, February 24

The Bookish Pilgrim, February 24

Connie’s History Classroom, February 25

Cover Lover Book Review, February 26

Pause for Tales, February 27

Giveaway

To celebrate her tour, Sherry is giving away the grand prize of a $50 Amazon Gift Card!!

Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.

https://gleam.io/mEe2g/texas-reclaimed-celebration-tour-giveaway

My Review

I have enjoyed reading the first two books from the Lone Star Redemption series by Sherry Shindelar, Texas Forsaken and Texas Divided. I was exciting to read the third installment, Texas Reclaimed. It was a delight meeting Cora and Ben. It was a fun journey to take along with the two and was easy to read from cover to cover in one sitting.

I am going to give Texas Reclaimed a well deserved five plus stars. I highly recommend it for readers who love to read clean Christian historical fiction, especially those set during the American Civil War era, will love it as much as me. I look forward to reading the next release from Sherry Shindelar in the near future. 

I received a digital copy of Sherry Shindelar's Texas Reclaimed from the publisher, but was not required to write a positive review. This review is one hundred percent my own honest opinion. 

Blog Tour and Giveaway: Texas Divided by Sherry Shindelar

About the Book

Book: Texas Divided

Author: Sherry Shindelar

Genre: Christian Historical Romance

Release date: March 25, 2025

He thought he was rescuing her from the Comanche. Now the Civil War soldier must prove he isn’t the villain she thinks he is.

Driven by the looming expectation of becoming a suffocatingly proper lady, Morning Fawn is determined to escape the confines of her uncle’s plantation and return to her adoptive Comanche tribe. But with each failed attempt, her hopes dwindle, and she wonders if she’ll ever find her way back home or if that world is forever lost to her.

Devon Reynolds, disillusioned by the price of affluence and the horrors of war, leaves his privileged life to join the Texas Rangers and later the cavalry. In the military service, he finds purpose . . . until he loses his wife during childbirth while he is away. In an attempt to redeem himself, he takes one last fateful mission to rescue Morning Fawn from the Comanche. But the results force him to question the righteousness of his actions and the cause he serves.
​
When Devon returns to Texas as a Yankee spy, his path crosses with Morning Fawn once more. Determined to save her from the prison of her uncle’s house and to recover Texas from the Confederacy, Devon is drawn to her fierce spirit and unwavering resolve. But can two wounded souls, each fighting their own battles, find solace and love amidst the chaos of war?

 

Click here to get your copy!

 

About the Author

Originally from Tennessee, Sherry loves to take her readers into the past. She is an avid student of the Civil War and the Old West. When she is not busy writing, she is an English professor working to pass on her love of writing to her students. Sherry is an award-winning writer: 2023 Genesis finalist, Maggie finalist, and Crown finalist. She currently resides in Minnesota with her husband of thirty-eight years. She has three grown children and three grandchildren.

 

 

 

More from Sherry

The Cotton Road

I loved the opportunity to tie the Texas frontier and the Civil War together in Texas Divided, the second book in my Lone Star Redemption series.

I have been an avid student of the Civil War for a couple decades. However, until I started researching for Texas Divided, I had no clue that the Yankees ever invaded Texas. But they did in November 1863. Why? It was because of cotton. By 1863, the Federal blockade of the Confederate coastline was fairly secure, and Texas became the golden gateway for funding the Confederacy.

Cotton from Arkansas, western Louisiana, and east Texas traveled the Cotton Road. This dusty trail ran from the railroad terminus in Alleyton, TX (about seventy miles west of Houston) by way of King’s Ranch near Corpus Christi to Brownsville and across the Rio Grande to Matamoros, Mexico, the largest cotton market in the world during the war. In regards to commercial activity, it rivaled pre-war New Orleans or Baltimore.

A young teamster wrote that from the watchtower at King’s Ranch, the main stop on the way to Matamoros, he could see hundreds of wagons on the road at one time, a long train of dust rising up as they traveled toward Brownsville and the Rio Grande.

At some points the trail was almost a mile wide due to traffic, and more than one hundred miles of it was desert with no water. Puffs of cotton clung to the sagebrush and cacti along the way and lingered for years after the war.

When the cotton reached Matamoros, it was loaded onto steamboats and/or wagons owned by Mexicans and transported to the mouth of the Rio Grande at the Gulf of Mexico. International ships from Britain, France, and other countries hovered there, sometimes hundreds at a time, waiting to fill their hulls with cotton. And the Yankees couldn’t stop them. If a Federal ship fired on a British, French, Mexican, or ship of another nationality, it could have been considered an act of war.

By 1863, cotton, which had sold for .10 cents a pound in 1860, now sold for as much as $1.89 a pound, and one bale averaged 450 – 500 pounds. The money made on the sale of cotton was the financial bloodline of the Confederacy. For example, in just one week in August, twenty thousand pounds of gunpowder arrived in Brownsville, purchased with proceeds from the sale of cotton.

That’s why the Federal Army invaded Brownsville in early November 1863. Their mission was to stop or at least seriously hinder the cotton trade. Doing so could save lives on the battlefield and perhaps bring an earlier end to the war.

The Yankees reached the city without any resistance. However, they found a meager one hundred and fifty bales on the Texas side of the river and could only gaze at the more than ten thousand bales stacked along the Mexican wharves. The Rebs had moved or destroyed everything of value.

The invasion lasted for several months and forced the Confederates to improvise and find new trails for the cotton shipments, hauling the loads via San Antonio to Eagle Pass and Laredo. Unfortunately, the Yankees only netted a hundred or so bales here and there.

Cotton continued to reign until the war efforts in the East bled the Confederacy dry. But for those few months at the end of 1863, hopes were high, especially amongst the two regiments of Texas cavalry fighting for the Union, Texans who abhorred the Confederacy and who had left Texas to avoid being forced into the Reb army. These men returned with the Federal troops in November 1863 to restore Texas to the Union and wreak havoc on the Cotton Road.

Lieutenant Devon Reynolds is one of these Texans, loyal to the Union, and determined to do his part to rescue Texas from the grip of the Confederacy. Except in his case, he trades his Yankee uniform for that of a Confederate and dons an eye patch, operating as a spy and saboteur. But his life becomes complicated and his mission uncertain when he runs into Morning Fawn, the woman he kidnapped from the Comanche eighteen months before. As far as she’s concerned, he ruined her life by sentencing her to her uncle’s plantation. Can he complete the mission and right the wrong? Texas Divided is a story of redemption, faithfulness, and perseverance. The characters come to an end of themselves and discover that God can make a way where there was no way.

Blog Stops

Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, May 20

Texas Book-aholic, May 21

Blossoms and Blessings, May 22 (Author Interview)

Pause for Tales, May 22

Locks, Hooks and Books, May 23

Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, May 24

Artistic Nobody, May 25 (Author Interview)

Happily Managing a Household of Boys, May 26

lakesidelivingsite, May 27

Books You Can Feel Good About, May 28

Jodie Wolfe – Stories Where Hope and Quirky Meet, May 29 (Author Interview)

For Him and My Family, May 30

Holly’s Book Corner, May 31

Stories By Gina, June 1 (Author Interview)

Book Butterfly in Dreamland, June 1

Bizwings Book Blog, June 2

Giveaway

To celebrate her tour, Sherry is giving away the grand prize of a $50 Amazon gift card!!

Be sure to comment on the blog stops for extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.

https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/00adcf54224/

My Review

Texas Divided is the second book from Sherry Shindelar's Lone Star Redemption series. I loved reading the first book, Texas Forsaken, and was excited to get my hands on this one. I enjoyed getting to know the main characters and taking this journey with them. Devon and Morning Fawn's story was full of adventure, love and faith. There are lessons to be learned, including the power of forgiveness. I thought it was great. 

I am going to give Texas Divided five stars. I have no doubt that lovers of clean Christian historical fiction, particularly American Civil War era, will love it as much as me. I look forward to reading the next installment from the Lone Star Redemption series. 

I received a paperback copy of Sherry Shindelar's Texas Divided from the publisher, but was not required to write a positive review. This review is one hundred percent my own honest opinion. 

Blog Tour and Giveaway: Texas Forsaken by Sherry Shindelar

About the Book

Book: Texas Forsaken

Author: Sherry Shindelar

Genre: Christian Historical Romance

Release date: May 21, 2024

The man who destroyed her life may be the only one who can save it.

Seven years ago, Maggie Logan (Eyes-Like-Sky) lost everything she knew when a raid on a wagon train tore her from her family. As the memories of her past faded to nothing more than vague shadows, Maggie adapted—marrying a Comanche warrior, having a baby, and rebuilding her life. But in one terrible battle, the U.S. Cavalry destroys that life, and she is taken captive again, this time by those who call themselves her people. Forced into a world she wants nothing to do with, Eyes-Like-Sky’s only hope of protecting her child may be an engagement to the man who killed her husband.

Enrolled in West Point to escape his overbearing father, Captain Garret Ramsey has graduated and finds himself assigned to the Texas frontier, witnessing the brutal Indian War in which both sides commit atrocities. Plagued by guilt for his own role, Garret seeks redemption by taking responsibility for the woman he widowed and her baby. Though he is determined to do whatever it takes to protect them, is he willing to risk everything for a woman whose heart is buried in a grave? Or is there hope she might heal to love once more?

 

Click here to get your copy!

 

About the Author

Originally from Tennessee, Sherry loves to take her readers into the past. She is an avid student of the Civil War and the Old West. When she is not busy writing, she is an English professor working to pass on her love of writing to her students. Sherry is an award-winning writer: 2023 Genesis finalist, Maggie finalist, and Crown finalist. She currently resides in Minnesota with her husband of thirty-eight years. She has three grown children and three grandchildren.

 

 

 

More from Sherry

The story of Cynthia Anne Parker, the most famous captive of the nineteenth century, haunted my heart for a couple of decades. Abducted from one world, adopted into another, and then stolen back, Cynthia Ann’s story of love and unrepairable loss captured my heart. All the more so since it was fact, not fiction.

I longed to give her a second chance. So I developed a character who was similar to Cynthia, started the narrative at the moment of crisis, and wrote a different trajectory. I couldn’t give Cynthia a happy ending, but I could give Eyes-Like-Sky a story of love and hope taking root in the midst of devastating loss.

Cynthia was taken captive by Comanches at age nine during an attack on her family’s fort in the Texas frontier in 1836. Her father and several extended family members were killed, and her brother John, her cousin Rachel, and a couple other family members were captured along with her.

Her Aunt Elizabeth was rescued a couple months after the attack. Her cousin Rachel, who had been badly abused by the tribe, was ransomed a couple of years later and died within a year of her return. John adopted the Comanche lifestyle and lived with the tribe for years before eventually leaving the tribe to farm in Mexico. But Cynthia became Comanche and became an integral part of the tribe for over twenty-four years.

She married an influential war chief, Peta Nocona, and had three children with him, including Quanah Parker, who eventually became a powerful Comanche chief. Several times over the years, Indian agents and traders attempted to ransom her, but she refused to go, and the tribe rejected their offers.

In December 1860, Texas Rangers, along with U.S. Cavalry troops, attacked her village and captured her and her baby girl, Prairie Flower (Topsanah), killing everyone else in the camp. (There has been significant historical debate about whether her husband was present at the time. Some accounts claim he died fighting to protect her. Other evidence points to him having been away on a hunting trip at the time of the attack and dying a couple years later from an old battle wound.)

Eventually, one of Cynthia’s relatives claimed her and took her to live with family, but she refused to accept this new life that was being forced upon her. Repeatedly, she tried to escape to the open plains, desperate to find her husband and her sons. One of her uncles eventually agreed to help her look for her people, but they’d have to wait until the Civil War ended.

Prairie Flower died, word came that Cynthia’s son Pecos had passed away, as well, and the Civil War dragged on. Cynthia lost hope of ever being reunited with the two remaining members of her beloved family, Nocona and Quanah.  Overcome by sadness and longing, she sank into a deep depression and died of a broken heart.

Cynthia Ann’s story, the story of a woman torn between cultures, perplexed, intrigued, and haunted me. My heart ached for her loss, and questions flooded my mind. Some stories are like that. They stay with you, and this one was all the more indelible because it was true and filled with unknowns.

As I put pen to paper to begin Texas Forsaken, I sought to create an indelible story of heart-wrenching trials, forgiveness, and second chances. A story of love and hope born anew. A story of redemption.

Blog Stops

Babbling Becky L’s Book Impressions, June 20

Alena Mentink, June 21

Holly’s Book Corner, June 21

Lighthouse Academy Blog, June 22 (Guest Review from Marilyn Ridgway)

Debbie’s Dusty Deliberations, June 23

Pause for Tales, June 23

Texas Book-aholic, June 24

Locks, Hooks and Books, June 25

Happily Managing a Household of Boys, June 26

Abba’s Prayer Warrior Princess, June 27

Truth and Grace Homeschool Academy, June 28

Stories By Gina, June 29 (Author Interview)

Books You Can Feel Good About, June 29

For Him and My Family, June 30

The Lofty Pages, July 1

Connie’s History Classroom, July 2

Cover Lover Book Review, July 3

Giveaway

To celebrate her tour, Sherry is giving away the grand prize package of a $50 Amazon gift card!!

Be sure to comment on the blog stops for nine extra entries into the giveaway! Click the link below to enter.

https://promosimple.com/ps/2c06b/texas-forsaken-celebration-tour-giveaway

My Review

Sherry Shindelar's Texas Forsaken is a beautifully written and emotional roller coaster ride of a story that I adored. This introduction to the Lone Star Redemption was full of love, action, forgiveness, relationships, overcoming trauma, hope, healing and faith. I thought the interactions between the main characters Maggie Logan (Eyes-Like-Sky) and Garrett. I had to keep reading and not put the down until I was completely finished in one sitting. I loved it.

I am giving Texas Forsaken a very well deserved five plus stars. I highly recommend it for readers who love to read clean historical romance. I am eagerly waiting for the next installment from the Lone Star Redemption series to see what happens next. 

I received a paperback copy of Sherry Shindelar's Texas Forsaken from the publisher, but was not required to write a positive review. This review is one hundred percent my own honest opinion.