People sometimes ask why the The Ballantyne Legacy was set in Pennsylvania and not Kentucky. And why Pittsburgh? Just take a look at this early rendering and you’ll hopefully see. It was a very beautiful place! Three rivers come together here (the Ohio, Monongahela, and the Allegheny) and there is a distinct point of land in the shape of an arrowhead. Rolling hills surround what was at that time a town but was once wilderness.
This old painting was by a Mrs. Gibson, wife of a Philadelphia lawyer in the year 1817, while on their honeymoon journey. I fell in love with it when I first saw it in a museum in Pittsburgh. Love’s Awakening opens in 1822 and while writing I often looked at this old image.
So now you know the rest of the story! Or at least the beginning!