Mildred Lykens — Lyle resident and Columbia Gorge News columnist — welcomed 2022 with the release of her new book, “Blue Feather’s Destiny.”
It’s the third in her Blue Feather series, based on the life of her maternal grandfather’s grandmother, Eliza Hudson, “born on the Little Rock Arkansas Indian Reservation to an Indian woman and a white man,” according to the family’s oral history.
Mildred Lykens with the three novels in her “Blue Feather” series — the latest of which was just released.
Contributed photo
The first book in the series, “Blue Feather,” was published in April 2019, and the second, “Blue Feather’s Frontier Life,” in October 2019.
When she began writing the first book in late 2018, she didn’t intend for it to be the beginning of a series.
“I set out to have Blue Feather as (Eliza’s) mother, who would wind up in Little Rock to give birth to Eliza, but the story line was left behind when it took on a life of its own,” Lykens said. Her genealogical quests have given some clues, such as Eliza most likely being Cherokee, but, without any documented record of her birth, and only family history to go on, the story she has crafted “is strictly fiction,” she said.
This is not her first book series. She is also the author of “The Tirrell Gang” and the sequel “The Lykens Legacy,” both published in 2008.
“My first two books are about my paternal grandfather’s outlaw years as the leader of the Tirrell Gang,” she said. “I had more information on the verbal history through my father’s stepmother, who spent many years living with us in her older years. She would tell the stories but if Dad was around, he would interrupt her and she would stop.”
She describes this story as “contrived from verbal history, documented history and plausible fiction, braided together to weave the story of my grandfather’s life.”
Her grandfather, born Hasten Homer Tirrell, died as Rev. Acey Lykens — she split the story where his name changed, she said. She did extensive research, traveling to Kentucky, Texas, Oklahoma and Arizona, checking locations that came up in the stories — including Mineral Wells, Texas, where her father was born.
“I made three trips to Mineral Wells and found parts of Dad’s family still alive and willing to tell and share what they had,” Lykens said. “My father wouldn’t help me, always stating he was too young to remember, but I gleaned bits and pieces from him and found documents in the places he claimed to have traveled.”
Lykens currently writes the bi-monthly Lyle community column for Columbia Gorge News; it likewise appears in Goldendale Sentinel. She started writing for the Lyle Monitor around 2002 and then Columbia Gorge Weekly. Her column ran in The White Salmon Enterprise, co-authored with Barbara Sexton before she took it on as a solo project.
When she’s not writing, she sews clothing for Samaritan Purse, founded by the Billy Graham Foundation, as she has for a number of years, donated through First Baptist Church in Bingen. “Many generous family and friends, and sometimes complete strangers, have donated fabric, thread, buttons, etc., to my endeavor” of creating A-line dresses for girls and tank tops for boys ages 3-14, she said.
Her first books were published with Lulu Printing; the last book is through Amazon Publishing. She credits Sentinel Publisher and Editor-in-Chief Lou Marzeles with helping upload the book. It prints on demand at Lulu Publishers, Barnes and Noble and Amazon. Lykens has autographed copies of her books that she also sells — she can be reached at 509-365-2273 or lykensme41@gmail.com.
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