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.
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
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.
- 2014 First Place, General Fiction Texas Association of Authors
- 2015 Winner Adult Fiction, North Texas Book Festival, Denton
- 2015 Finalist, Historical Fiction, International Book Awards
- Best Books Read in 2015, Gals-Very Smart Gals:
shelves
Waters Plantation
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