Facts Coupled with Inspiration:

“If what I say resonates with you, it’s merely because we’re branches of the same tree.”

~ William Butler Yeats, Poet and Author

Have you ever had a bit of history, a story, that just would not leave your mind? That is exactly what happened for Annie Vanhoose in regard to historical figure Lydie Marland. Annie was born in Ponca City but moved to Nashville with her family when she was two. However, she still spent time visiting the area due to extended family who lived in Ponca City and Blackwell. After 20 years in Nashville, Annie moved back to Ponca City in 2017 to be closer to her grandparents, and soon her parents restarted their family business, Bargain Barn. Her grandfather, David Hall, had founded the business, the local TV station and worked as a reporter. He told his granddaughter about trying to interview Lydie Marland in her later years, and Annie’s imagination was sparked.

After a visit to Marland Mansion, her interest was piqued even more, and she wrote about the Marlands in college creative writing classes. Vanhoose says, “That’s really where The Black Gold Heiress was born, in those early impressions and wondering what it must have been like.”

Annie would work on the ideas for this novel over time, but it was a while before it came to fruition. She moved to Colorado during the pandemic, and that’s where she met her husband, Justin. It was during this time in Colorado that she wrote two children’s books, Gus Gets a Human and Prosperity Lane, under the pseudonym Payden Hall. Vanhoose says Prosperity Lane, published in September 2020, is a “middle-grade novella about 10-year-old Temperance Brown who spends the summer with her eccentric Aunt Lavendar on a street where flowers—and people—are allowed to bloom in their own time.” The story is about belonging and learning to love what makes us different. The book can be found on Amazon.

Her other children’s book Gus Gets a Human is a “sweet, funny story written from the perspective of a clumsy Bernese Mountain Dog puppy waiting for his forever family.” Vanhoose’s family raised this type of dog for a time, and the story’s message is “how to embrace our differences and what it feels like to belong,” she says. Published in July 2021, it can be found in the Bookstore at Lulu.com.

Themes about differences, and yet belonging, emerge from her writing, and Annie felt a sense of belonging in Ponca City, remembering the many highlights it has to offer a person and family. Favorite memories were events like Oktoberfest at Marland Mansion and walking in Cann Gardens. Even window displays on Grand Avenue during the holidays is a special memory. However, her fondest memories are helping run the Bargain Barn on weekends with her parents. Hosted out of the Robin Hood Flour Mill, Annie had fun helping run the live shows and meeting Ponca City residents.

Although she began to write the novel while living here in Ponca City, it wasn’t completed until sometime after she’d moved away. Vanhoose says, “The emotional blueprint had been in my mind for years.” The story stayed with her, and she desired to write about this intriguing and mysterious legacy from Lydie’s voice rather than E.W.’s. She wanted Lydie to be remembered as herself and not only as someone’s wife or daughter. “There was something about Lydie Marland’s life that felt both extraordinary and heartbreakingly human,” Vanhoose says. “She’d been a foster child, a First Lady, a socialite, a recluse. The contradictions alone could fill a novel.”

And fill it she did. She drew heavily from history, touring the Mansion and spending hours tracking down locals who had known Lydie, and she read old newspaper clippings and legal documents at the Ponca City Library on trips back to Ponca City. Even with all the numerous facts she uncovered, Annie’s representation takes the creative liberties of a true novelist. She explains her desire to step into the “emotional life of a woman inspired by Lydie, but not bound to her exact timeline or choices.” Her goal was to honor the legacy of who Lydie was and not to try to solve any mystery. The novel explores “larger questions about womanhood, power, silence and agency in a time and place where so many voices were filtered or forgotten.” It can be found on Amazon as an eBook or in paperback, or if you have Kindle Unlimited there is no additional charge to read it.

Vanhoose says she hopes readers embrace the discomfort that was the life of Lydie Marland, both daughter and then wife of E.W., and that the “novel doesn’t shy away from that tension, it leans into it.” Of the novel, she says, “I hope readers see the value in stories that don’t fit neatly into historical plaques or glossy headlines. Lydie’s life—and the character inspired by her—were complex, messy and filled with longing.” Annie concludes, “All she really wanted was security and to feel like she belonged. Facing that discomfort helps us understand historical figures better, judge them a little less harshly and see a little of ourselves in them.”

Authors like Annie Vanhoose, strong on empathy, write novels like this with depth and compassion. She is currently writing a new novel, All the Rich Men Live in Texas, about a down-on-her-luck woman who leaves New York City and heads to Beaumont, Texas, during the Spindletop oil boom of 1907 to find her fortune by marrying a rich oil man. Of course, her plan doesn’t go as she expected. Vanhoose says, “It’s a story about ambition, reinvention and what happens when the roles we play start to wear thin. I’m excited to bring a very different kind of heroine to life in this one.”

Annie Vanhoose and husband Justin live in Denver with their two dogs—Thelma Lou, a Golden Retriever, and Dolly, a Bernese Mountain Dog; however, their family is growing. The couple expects their first child, a son named Hunter, right around the corner in September.

➡️ Opt in or out of different newsletters on your “My Account” page.

➡️ Learn more about Ponca City Monthly+

Ponca City Monthly is a locally owned publication that delivers hyperlocal news in print and online.

Like what we are doing? Feel free to forward this along and tell a friend.

Share

Sponsorship information/customer service: email [email protected]