Mattie’s Story: Adventures in Dayton: 

Being an historical fiction novella told in diary format with many pleasing incorporations of facts gleaned from diverse and true primary sources of the late Victorian era

A new tale of the historic Shenandoah Valley of Virginia from the author of Rattlesnake Granny has arrived.

Young Mattie A. Templeton is nervous about leaving home and unsure of herself. She is also eager and determined to be a good scholar at Shenandoah Institute in Dayton, Virginia.

Explore 1892 and 1893 life in the Valley with a plucky new heroine in this well-researched historical fiction.

Informed by multiple authentic sources and featuring historic people and places interwoven with fun new characters, Mattie’s adventures in Dayton are sure to please fans of the Shenandoah Valley, regional culture, and Victorian manners.

Sneak Peek

Arrival

Sunday, September 4, 1892

Dear Diary,

Cousin Wilbur and his malodorous friends found me at the train depot and dumped me here like so much cabbage. My diary, my new brown diary with the gilt pages, I tell you, this is not how one expects an adventure on the American frontier to begin.

Would it not have been more pleasant if I could begin my story in this way, “Thus, our intrepid flame-haired heroine sets out on her journey, escorted by handsome youths, brimming with joy as she begins her higher educational career?”

However, I did require transport to Dayton and Wilbur was at hand. He is my cousin by marriage, finishing up his own education at the Augusta Military Academy. Any port in a storm, as they say. Some of his cadet friends have a buggy and drove me over the admittedly bumpy roads to my destination at the Shenandoah Institute. A number of institutions of higher learning developed in the Shenandoah Valley in recent years. Some of these institutions send a carriage to the depot to meet new students. My institute does not, though they gave us notice that a hack runs daily from Harrisonburg to Dayton. In hindsight, it would have been better to have taken such transport as opposed to galloping to the institution with a group of (whom I suspect to be) nearly miscreant youths. Happily, few saw us arrive. What’s more, Cousin Wilbur and his classmates were all too eager to perform the aforementioned dumping of me in my new environment and to be on their way, no doubt back to courting Miss Mary Baldwin’s Seminary girls.

Text copyright Stephanie S. Gardner, 2026

All rights reserved

Please email me at junktime2000@yahoo.com for correspondence regarding carrying the book and author talks.

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