Marthabush.com
Welcome to Marthabush.com
After 40+ years as a marketing consultant, I've shed my corporate skin and allowed myself to explore the other interests I've starved for attention and time. An unabashed history nerd I am polishing a novel I hope to reveal to the world soon. A dogged genealogist, I delight in sharing the surprises I've uncovered from my ancestors' pasts. An impatient zone 6a organic gardener, I do battle with the deer and squirrels to constantly expand a colorful perennial garden. I hope this site will be of interest to folks who share mine.
Writer in Search of Representation
THE MARTYRS' WIDOW
Now in search of representation, THE MARTYRS’ WIDOW, is a novel of historical fiction about Lucinda Morgan Harris, a real woman, widowed once by a conspiracy of Freemasons in 1826 and a second time by an Illinois mob in 1844. She faced down secret societies, religious zealots, and survived betrayals and violence while moving her family westward across America in the early 1800s. Her wry, first-person narrative will appeal to readers of Ariel Lawhon’s The Frozen River, Zadie Smith’s The Fraud, and Sue Monk Kidd’s The Invention of Wings.
Lucinda, at fifty, finally escapes a harsh frontier with her grandson, Alonzo, voyaging by steamboat down the Missouri and Mississippi rivers to Memphis. Onboard, she meets a reporter, B.W. Richmond, who made her a front-page news story as the “Masonic Widow” twenty years earlier. He knows she became a polygamous wife of the Mormon leader Joseph Smith, and he's convinced she has more to tell. Over the course of their eight-week trip downriver, he persuades her to share her journey of resilience and redemption.
From Marketing Consultant to Creative Writing
I am a retired marketing consultant with a passion for history. I graduated from Wesleyan University with Honors in History, but shelved my childhood dream of becoming a professional historian when I heard the siren call of the NY advertising industry. Over 40 years, I served global clients with award-winning marketing.
If you are interested in my marketing career, visit me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/marthabush/
My research hobby in local history led me to discover Lucinda Morgan Harris, who burst into notoriety with the kidnapping of her first husband and became Joseph Smith's first polygamous wife. The story of her husbands has been told in countless books, but her own story has not been told. My prior writing career focused on business blogs, articles, podcasts, websites, and white papers. My determination to write about her life has led me to dive in and learn the craft of fiction writing.
I am not a Mormon, but my interest in new religions began with my undergraduate thesis, which examined the explosive growth of religious innovations around 1800 -- especially in my region of Upstate New York, known as the "burned-over district."