PHOTO: Jane Kirkpatrick, bestselling author and lifelong seeker of stories, photographed in Oregon where many of her novels are set.
Stories Of Strength Faith And Forgotten Women
Jane Kirkpatrick explores the lives of real historical women through fiction rooted in faith, resilience, and emotional truth, offering insight into how the past continues to shape and inspire today.
Jane Kirkpatrick writes with a reverence for the past that is neither nostalgic nor sentimental, but grounded in a deep respect for truth, resilience, and the intricacies of the human spirit. Her stories breathe life into the overlooked corners of history, particularly the lives of women whose courage shaped communities but seldom found their way into the public record. Each of her novels offers readers not only a window into the past, but a mirror reflecting their own quiet strengths.
A trained mental health professional and lifelong student of human nature, Kirkpatrick weaves narrative with emotional acuity and spiritual depth. Her characters wrestle with grief, faith, isolation, and change—yet always with a sense of grace that feels hard-won and quietly triumphant. Whether set along coastal Oregon or in the arid stretches of the American West, her novels honour the land as much as the people who try to survive upon it.
In Across the Crying Sands, her latest work, Kirkpatrick returns to the lives of real historical women, rendering their hardships and hopes in prose as rugged and luminous as the landscapes they inhabit. She does not offer easy answers, but she does offer truth—the kind that heals, uplifts, and endures.
There is an unmistakable stillness in Kirkpatrick’s writing, a listening quality, as though each book were a long walk through wind and memory. It’s in that hush between pages where her characters begin to speak—often with quiet power, and always with meaning.
What inspired you to focus your storytelling on real women in history, particularly those whose voices have often been overlooked?
These women found me. I had always loved reading diaries of pioneer women regardless of the continent, and I’d wonder where they got their strength from. That question became personal when my husband and I left our jobs (I was the director of a mental health clinic and he was a builder) to embark on an adventure to create a life 7 miles from our mailbox and 11 miles from a paved road. I read about another woman 150 years before me doing the same things: harnessing a spring, building a house/hotel, and more. They were successful because they lived well with their neighbors, the Wasco, Warm Springs and Paiute people in Central Oregon. I’d taken a job working for those tribes and wanted to tell that couple’s story. I couldn’t find enough documents for a biography, so I ventured into fiction where I could explore why she did what she did and how she might have felt? After that story was published as A Sweetness to the Soul and it won a national award, my publisher asked if I had any more stories and yes, I did! It’s been my privilege to tell the stories of these women and men, to help them step from their century to our own, to teach us and touch us with their lives.
How do you balance historical accuracy with the creative freedom required to bring your characters to life?
I do love research. I seek out what I call “shared knowings” meaning the documents, interviews, ephemera point to the same answers of what a character did and when they did it. I honor what is agreed to about the history. But I often find discrepancies in the motivation and feelings ascribed to a particular decision – why the family went west; why did Mary (in Across the Crying Sands) hire a nanny so Mary could take on a dangerous occupation of delivering the mail over rugged coastal landscapes in the 1890s? those questions are the stuff of fiction and hopefully what will help people find themselves inside these stories.
In Across the Crying Sands, Mary’s journey is one of grief and rediscovery—how do you approach writing such emotionally layered narratives?
I rely heavily on my background as a clinical social worker and therapist. Journey books help as well – Awakening the Heros Within by Carolyn Pearsonis a favorite and the use of the Myers-Briggs personality inventory help me deepen the characters. For Mary, it was noting when particular challenges happened: homesteading alone while her husband worked away from home. Having four children close together. Being hospitalized for several months with no more children after that – all gave me reason to explore grief and grief as the price we pay for loving.
Many of your novels deal with themes of hardship and perseverance. How do these themes reflect your own life experiences?
See the first answer about homesteading. Add to it a spouse with significant health issues, being a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, recovering from a serious plane accident. But I had a way to climb the “rungs of the ladder toward some sort of light no matter how dim nor strange.” (Kim Stafford poetry). Asking how historical women moved toward the light is part of my story-telling journey.
What role does faith play in both your writing process and the stories you choose to tell?
I weave four threads in my stories: landscape, relationships, work and spirituality. The poet Rilke wrote that when we’re born God calls us by name and send us out into the universe. We don’t remember that but we hear the words through life, “you, sent out beyond your recall, go, to the limits of your longing.” My writing is a part of that listening, going beyond my recall, stepping out on a cloud of faith believing I won’t fall through.
Your background in social work and mental health is unique among authors. How has that shaped your perspective on character development?
When I left my mental health position, friends and family worried for us. Writing grew as a way to share with them the journey – that longing – in telling stories. I learned later that the Hebrew word for parable means to “toss along beside” and the Greek word for comfort is to “come along beside.” My characters are always seeking.
Of all the historical figures you’ve written about, which one challenged you the most as a writer and why?
Cassie Simpson in A Gathering of Finches. Because I thought it was a love story and I discovered it was a tragedy yet I wanted people to feel empathy for her despite her/our poor decisions.
What advice would you offer to other authors who want to write meaningful, historically grounded fiction that uplifts and inspires?
Listen to the story that won’t let you go. And from Structuring your Novel by Roberts and Fitgerald answer three questions. What is my intention. What is my attitude and What is my purpose. Get the answers into one sentence each to help guide you through the writing and to silence the harpies that tell you to abandon your post.
