New book features Montana’s ‘Stagecoach Mary’ Fields

Bigfork’s Leslie Budewitz is back with her 18th published book. While she may be known for her Spice Shop Mysteries or Food Lovers’ Village Mysteries, this time she has dipped her finger into Montana’s rich history and cooked up a collection of tales on one of its forgotten figures -- “Stagecoach Mary Fields.” 

Mary Fields was born into slavery in Tennesse. She headed west in 1885 as part of the Ursuline Sisters’ Montana Mission and lived the rest of her life out in Central Montana near Cascade. She is believed to be the first Black woman with a U.S. Postal Star Route, hence her nickname.  

“She was instantly fascinating to me, as I think she is to a lot of people because we don’t know the stories of Black people in the American west. They just are not talked about a lot. And yet Black people were here,” Budewitz said.  

“All God’s Sparrows and Other Stories” combines three short stories following Fields’s first experiences in Montana with a brand-new novella exploring the later years. “All God’s Sparrows,” “Miss Starr’s Goodbye” and “Coming Clean” were all originally published in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, the first winning the Agatha Award.  

Fields’s involvement with the missions, her experience as a Black woman and as a single woman in the American West were intriguing to Budewitz. While she researched all of these concepts, most of her work as a white author went into understanding the Black experience at that time in history. Books such as “Black Montana” and “A Black Woman’s West” served as resources.  

“I don’t think I would write a contemporary book with a Black main character because there are other people who know that world far better than I ever will. But with historical, none of us knows 1885 firsthand,” Budewitz said. In her writing, she is sure to follow the three R’s: respect, research and well-rounded characters. She writes in third person from Fields’s perspective.  

For historical fiction, Budewitz was able to draw on the experiences of many western women to incorporate throughout the stories. One story that inspired her was that of a woman from St. Ignatius, who gave Budewitz the cutting of a rose her grandmother had carried from Pennsylvania in a coffee can on her way to Montana. With Fields’s known love of flowers, it seemed to fit.  

“I think historical fiction has the ability to take us to a place in a way that written history sometimes doesn’t. With fiction, we get to understand the emotions and we get to understand the relationships,” Budewitz said.  

“That was my main goal, really. I wanted to bring a forgotten person to life, because she embodies a lot that I think is valuable to remember.” 

“All God’s Sparrows and Other Stories” is available at Bigfork Art and Cultural Center, Electric Avenue Gifts, and anywhere books are sold in digital or paperback format. Budewitz will give a talk at Bigfork Art and Cultural Center Saturday, Sept. 21 from 2 p.m.. to 4 p.m. She also plans to appear at Flathead River Writers’ Conference and at North Lake County Library in October. Visit www.lesliebudewitz.com for more info.