I’ve been introducing the characters from A Different Kind of Fire on Twitter and Facebook and realized I should do the same here.
Ruby Schmidt, a stubborn Texas gal of eighteen. Though it means abandoning her childhood beau, Bismarck Behrens, she goes to Philadelphia to study art. Only by leaving does she realize how attached she is to the austere Texas landscape. Her plans run into a hiccup when she and another artist—Willow Wycke—fall in love. When Willow is shipped off to Europe, an Italian nobleman preys on Ruby. Eventually she returns to Texas and her beau—but will he still love her?
Bismarck Behrens, Ruby’s childhood beau. A true-blue cowboy, he’s built a house for Ruby, but it sits empty while she’s in Philadelphia. Taciturn and laconic, he yearns to tell Ruby the sweet nothings she wants to hear but can’t wring them out. He loves Ruby through almost everything—except her love for Willow. Eventually he realizes that, though he can’t live with her, he also can’t live without her.
Willow Wycke, the Philadelphia society woman who becomes Ruby’s closest friend, her sister in art—and her lover. When their love affair is torn asunder by Willow’s family, they remain friends for thirty-five years before reuniting. Willow is a feminist, a female artist making her own way, and developing a new style of art all her own.
Francesco d’Este, the mercurial Italian nobleman who becomes obsessed with Ruby because she reminds him of a painting by Titian that hung in his mother’s bedroom in Venice. He seduces Ruby and gets her pregnant when she’s most bereft about losing both Bismarck and Willow. D’Este marries the pregnant Ruby but just as readily deserts her, only tracking her down when he needs money for cocaine and opium.
These images, like all the others in this series, are simply depictions of what my characters look like in my mind and aren’t necessarily who the pictured folks really are.
Stay tuned—next week I’ll talk about some of the minor characters in A Different Kind of Fire.
