Sandra Dallas is a New York Times bestselling author of nearly 20 adult novels, several children’s novels, and numerous works of nonfiction about Western subjects. Her work has won numerous awards and prizes including the Colorado Book Award and, in 2021, she was inducted into the Colorado Authors’ Hall of Fame. A former bureau chief for Business Week magazine, Sandra lives in Denver and Georgetown, Colorado, with her husband.
SunLit: Tell us this book’s backstory – what’s it about and what inspired you to write it?
Sandra Dallas: I don’t remember why I wrote “Tough Luck” (the working title was “Finding Pa”), because I wrote it a dozen years ago or more. I was unsure about the ending, and my agent had questions. While we were talking, she suggested I write a Christmas quilt story, so I moved on to write “A Quilt for Christmas.”
UNDERWRITTEN BY
Each week, The Colorado Sun and Colorado Humanities & Center For The Book feature an excerpt from a Colorado book and an interview with the author. Explore the SunLit archives at coloradosun.com/sunlit.
We both forgot about “Tough Luck,” until her assistant came across the manuscript, loved it, and asked why we hadn’t done anything with it. My agent said, “I don’t know,” then called me and asked, and I said, “I don’t know.” I reread it, and to my surprise, I couldn’t remember how it ended. It was like reading somebody else’s manuscript.
My agent submitted the manuscript to St. Martin’s, and they picked it up. “Tough Luck” is the story of two orphans who go west to find their father, who left home in 1859 to find a gold mine in Colorado.
SunLit: Place the excerpt you selected in context. How does it fit into the book as a whole and why did you select it?
Dallas: The excerpt is the beginning of the book. It sets the stage for the story. I ended the selection with the remark, “Tough luck,” which sets the tone of the book.
SunLit: What influences and/or experiences informed the project before you sat down to write?
Dallas: I don’t know, because I really can’t remember. I know I always liked reading (and writing) Overland Trail accounts, and I love the settings of early Denver and the mining towns. Most of my books are set in Colorado, because I love our state’s history.
“Tough Luck”
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SunLit: What did the process of writing this book add to your knowledge and understanding of your craft and/or the subject matter?
Dallas: Research always adds to my knowledge of the West. I can’t recall anything specific that it added to my knowledge of writing, except that everything you write makes you progress. That old saw “you learn to write by writing” is certainly true in my case.
This is book number 19 in my adult fiction, and I’ve learned with every one of them. That’s underscored when I reread my early books and think I would have written them differently in places if I were writing them now.
SunLit: What were the biggest challenges you faced in writing this book?
Dallas: Bringing it out of hiding.
SunLit: What do you want readers to take from this book?
Dallas: I want readers to say at the finish that they enjoyed themselves and that they learned a little bit of Colorado history.
SunLit: Why do you always write about Colorado?
Dallas: I moved to Colorado in 1945 when I was 6 years old. I love this state, and I love its history. Mom and Dad took us to see the historic sites. I worked for Business Week magazine for 35 years, as Denver bureau chief and covered the Mountain States, mostly Colorado. As a reporter, I learned the state’s economy and politics, as well as its history. If you were me, wouldn’t you write about Colorado?
SunLit: Tell us about your next project.
Dallas: My 20th adult novel, “The Hired Man”, is set in the Dust Bowl and is about a stranger who shows up in a small Colorado town. It explores the prejudice and fear in a farm community when a murder occurs and the outsider is blamed. My books usually don’t have moral themes to them — or at least, I don’t set out that way — but in this case, the book explores the question of whether it’s right to seek justice when the law can’t do so.
A few more quick items
Currently on your nightstand for recreational reading: I write a couple of columns for The Denver Post, one on books of regional interest, the other on mysteries. So I read all the time. I usually have a mystery as well as a book by a local author on my nightstand. But I’m also doing research for another book, so right now I’m reading “Bachelor Bess: The Homesteading Letters of Elizabeth Corey, 1909-1919.”
First book you remember really making an impression on you as a kid: “Smiling Hill Farm” (I can’t remember the author) and “The Little House in the Big Woods” (Laura Ingalls Wilder.) Both are about history.
Best writing advice you’ve ever received: “Just do it.” And the advice from Ann Lamott’s “Bird By Bird.”
Favorite fictional literary character: Laura Ingalls Wilder and Dave Robicheaux (James Lee Burke.)
Literary guilty pleasure (title or genre): Mysteries
Digital, print or audio – favorite medium to consume literature: Print, definitely. I use an e-reader only when I travel.
One book you’ve read multiple times: ”The Tenmile Range” (the poetry of Belle Turnbull). I knew Belle, who was an old woman when I moved to Breckenridge as a bride in 1963. She had been a teacher in Colorado Springs, before she left for Breckenridge in the 1940s, with her roommate, novelist Helen Turnbull.
Other than writing utensils, one thing you must have within reach when you write: Family photographs
Best antidote for writer’s block: Writing