Myramcilvain

Welcome to My Website

Allow me to share the Texas tales I love to tell.
If you are wondering what kind of fiction I write, it’s in the vein of Paulette Jiles’ News of the World and Sarah Bird’s Daughter of a Daughter of a Queen––stories with strong characters whose lives are set in a particular period of history. In my case, it’s 19th Century Texas.

ANNOUNCEMENT

My twelfth book, The Knotted Ring, is the 2025 Grand Prize Winner for Texas Best Fiction! You will find it and all my books listed above.

 
 
TEXAS TALES –– a great gift for lovers of stories about Texas characters from padres, preachers, politicians, and power brokers to cattle barons, immigrants, musicians, and artists––who created the patchwork called Texas.
AMAZON     BOOK PEOPLE

A GERMAN FAMILY SAGA, a collection of three award-winning books, traces German immigrants who arrived on the Texas coast in the mid-1800s. They built a thriving seaport that became known as Indianola before a vicious hurricane left a ghost town. Follow the family to Washington County where they find hope for new lives. 

Book 1 THE DOCTOR’S WIFE

BOOK 2 STEIN HOUSE

Book 3 WATERS PLANTATION

THE DOCTOR’S WIFE

Amelia Anton expects great adventure in the new land of Texas, but her dreams are shattered when her employer abandons her in Galveston.

The sudden proposal of the ship’s handsome physician seems too good to be true; is Doctor Stein really the man she imagines? Settling with him in the German migrant camp on the Texas coast only feeds her sense of failure.

 STEIN HOUSE: After three long months at sea, Helga Heinrich and her four children sail into the thriving Indianola seaport on the Texas coast in 1853 to begin their new life. They are determined to overcome the memory and haunting legacy of Max, her husband and their papa, who drowned in a drunken leap from the dock as their ship pulled away from the German port.

 

 

 

shelves

Waters Plantation

It is 1875 in Texas, and Albert Waters takes pride in his image—prosperous merchant and plantation owner who freed slaves before the Civil War and gave them land afterward. Then his son Toby, ready to depart for Harvard Medical College, demands answers. Was his mother a slave?

shelves

MORE FICTION

When Meredith Haggerty survived the fall of the North Tower on 9/11, she grabbed a chance to escape her abusive husband. The warm welcome she found on the Texas Rio Grande became a mixed blessing: how could she have a new life and continue to hide her identity?

At the end of WWII, Miranda Harrison struggles to make sense of her changing body and the turmoil in her life–a papa driven to destroy himself, a mama hiding her past in a cloak of piety, and a live-in grandmother who reigns over the household. Stirred into the family mix is a fifteen-year-old cousin who holds the adults and Miranda in guilty submission.

reviews

“Readers will be drawn in by McIlvain’s characters, who are richly developed with powerful voices. The tension crafted between Susannah’s past and present is palpable throughout, and McIlvain skillfully depicts her warring emotions.”

Knotted Ring

BookLifeview

“…immersive historical prequel portrays the birth of a Texas town through the eyes of a young immigrant….McIlvain has a historian’s eye for detail, a good ear for dialogue, and a fascination with the political machinations that affect the tiny town’s growth, including unflinching engagement with the inhuman institution of slavery.”

The Doctor's Wife

Kirkus Review

“In this historical novel, McIlvain talls a tale of love lost and found during the colonization of Texas in the 1820s….An often engrossing and well-handled story of the 19th century.”

Knotted Ring

Kirkus Review

UPCOMING EVENTS

LONE STAR FESTIVAL

Myra reads from THE KNOTTED RING

Noon, June 7

Wyndham Garden Hotel

3401 South I 35

Austin, TX 78741

June 7 to 8

9 am to 4 pm

MYRA–RADIO INTERVIEW

on

The Priscilla Leder Show

KZSM 104.1 San Marcos Public Radio

June 17  4 to 5 pm

Theme: German  Settlement in Texas

MISS RUBY’S CORRAL

Annual Book Signing

Historic Goliad Texas Square

December 6

9 am to 4 pm