When Writing Historical Romance in the Old West by Kim Turner

       I've been a registered nurse for over 35 years and it shows in my writing I hope. Though there are times my editor may tell me to pipe down the medical or soften the injury I just can't quit playing nurse. While I write western historical romance I still say what I really have in my McCades of Cheyenne series is family saga with romance and suspense. Yes my cowboys fall hard for their girl but there is a lot going on in my stories while that is happening. Things are going on with the family and all the brothers and inevitably someone's gonna get hurt, sick or injured.
     That being said I wanted to offer something different here and give writers a hint or two on writing about old west injuries, medicines and treatments. Rule number one is to do your research and if you are truly writing about the old west it was actually a very short time period in history which I need to clarify first. To break it down: 1607 to 1912 is a period called the frontier days. This is when discovery and travel/exploration across America first began and continued. Cowboys and true western events happened between: 1865 to 1895....however the true cowboy boomtowns hit around 1879 to 1982...and don't forget to know the history such as the cattle market died 1880 pretty much ending the era of real cowboys.
     The first of the cowboys who did arrive west were often soldiers who headed west after the war in the late 1860 and many a rogue pioneer veered off that direction as well. At that time medicine was much like what happened during the war...very barbaric and still with a lot of home remedies and treatments. While cities back East had hospitals and physicians who performed surgeries under various kinds of anesthesias, not many of the medical procedures were set up to be performed out west. Any equipment or advances just weren't available there.      
    So as I wrote the McCades of Cheyenne series and other western historical novels I've remained cognizant of what might or might not have been utilized or performed in that time and day. My goal is to provide a few hints I've learned along the way.     
     First, do your research on herbal medicines of the time and what plants grew in the location of the setting in your story. Remember the Indians already knew a lot about plants and herbs and their healing powers. Women knew the power of onion polices for infected wounds and garlic or honey as natural antibiotics. I found myself purchasing several herbal remedy books to help me get things right in my stories.     
    There really weren't many hospitals and your local veterinarian or snake oil salesman might have been of a little help but likely not much. Research pain and other medications and what they were called at the time. For example the old west fell victim to Opium Houses which ruined many lives during those years due to addiction. And while today we give morphine,  back then it was called: Tincture of Opium, just as an example.     
     I encourage a lot of research around what injury is intended for a character and see if its going to fit the time period and what was available to doctors and caregivers. Here are a couple of examples from my McCades of Cheyenne series:      
     For a cowboy a broken leg might mean becoming crippled for life and being unable to climb in the saddle if it was a left leg for instance. The left leg is utilized to step into the stirrup and mount a horse. This was a question I had to research in Wyatt's Bounty because he wound up beaten and I realized I had to plan that well and keep him still for weeks before he could seek his revenge. Lucky enough his best girl was Doc Tess....a graduate of the Philadelphia Women's college of Medicine at the time. It was also rare to have a female doctor and a lot of people were skeptics about letting them render care.     
     When I was working on Sawyer's Rose, Sawyer gets shot and in the old west it wasn't that many survived a bad gunshot wound. If a cowboy was gut shot then he'd linger until infection killed him days or weeks later. Not a pretty death and death didn't always come right when someone was shot like on TV. They died of fever and sepsis when it came down to it. So I gave Sawyer a left shoulder hit and he did nearly die. I actually had Doc Tess give his brothers blood to Sawyer and while she'd have known to do this from her training back East, I had to write carefully and correctly about that practice in the late 1800s which worked for some and killed others.     
     In Dawson's Haven, Dawson takes an arrow through the belly. In the old west that was kinda bad for blood loss and infection depending on what internal organs were hit. So I planned well where that arrow was placed but still had Dawson suffer weeks of fever and infection enough to need a second surgery.     
     Back then women sewed up wounds with their sewing needles. Doctors bled people until they might have died of anemia. Broken bones mended badly. Fevers were treated with ice and covering someone in piles of blankets...something we don't do today in medicine. Oh we use the ice but not multiple blankets. We have cooling blankets.     
​     So you can see by my examples you really have to do your research on the dates and current medical options depending on where a story takes place and what year.  There are a lot of websites that can update you on how things were done or not done on various diseases, illness and injuries. And as I've had to learn the hard way, readers will let you know you didn't get something quite right in a story if you haven't done your homework. So take the to plan well for what happens in your story. You'll never regret having done that well from the start.

BIOGRAPHY:
Kim Turner writes western historical romance, and discovered her passion of writing at the age of eight. Kim has worked as a Registered Nurse for over 35 years and enjoys studying the medical treatments of the old west as well as keeping up with the latest western movies and television. While she loves reading anything from highlanders to pirates, she claims to have an unquenchable thirst for the American Cowboy when choosing her reads. Kim lives south of Atlanta with her husband and two daughters. Kim's Mooto: It's All About A Cowboy and the Woman He Loves.
 
Kim Turner's The McCade of Cheyenne series is a family saga full of suspense, old west and romance all wrapped up in one. Fall in love with the McCade Brothers one brother at a time.

Sawyers Rose Book #1: Will a sheriff set on avenging his father's death rescue the mail order bride with secrets of her own? 
Wyatt's Bounty Book #2: Will a bounty hunter set on revenge risk it all for the lady doctor who walked away?
Dawson's Haven Book #3: Will an Indian Agent allow the woman who has captured his heart come to his rescue?
Evan's Ransom Book #4: Will the return of the only woman he's ever loved turn a cowboys life around? (Coming in 2026!) 

​A McCades of Cheyenne Novel #1
Paint the Sky: Will love, where two hearts collide be enough when their world falls apart? (Coming Fall 2024!)
A story for Leaning Bear the Cheyenne Medicine Man from Dawson's Haven, who falls in love with a white woman who has come to teach on the reservation. 
Other characters in this series who will have stories:
Eleanor "Dodge" McCade- Loving Brett
Zane Carve McCade-Zane's Law
More TBA..Follow the McCades through the years to catch up on this historical Family Saga!

Sales:
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Kim-Turner/author/B01BTE6K54

Contact Kim:
Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/kimturnerwrites
Website: https://kimturnerwrites.com
Blog: https://kimturnerwrites.blogspot.com