Ani Get Your Gun
by Anne Kushnick
There are some fine frontier authors out there just as there are fine frontier artists. I’ve often wished I could inhabit the head and heart and gifted hands of Pamela Patrick White or David Wright or John Buxton, just to name a few. Anne Kushnick is new to me but the woman she pained is not. When I came across this oil on canvas, I knew it was far more than a painting of a determined, rifle-wielding 18th-century woman. It’s also the heroine of my work in progress, a frontier story set in the wilds of what is now West Virginia.
My current heroine is unconventional and has a bit more sass/spirit than my others, maybe because she’s been raised with five brothers. There’s not much that’s graceful about her and the only thing ruffled is her cap! I especially like that her hair is messy and her rifle is level. She has fierce focus. In fact, she looks like she’d rather spit than speak. Pretty, perhaps, and pretty intimidating. She embodies that determined frontier spirit that truly won the west. Meet Miss Swan of novel 11. She’s nothing like her ladylike name;)