Stein House  by Myra Hargrave McIlvain, has won the 2014 Best General Fiction Award presented by the Texas Association of Authors.

Based on historical events, Stein House is the story of Indianola from its heyday in 1853 until the hurricane in 1886 left behind a ghost town.  Helga Heinrich and her four children sail into the thriving seaport of Indianola determined to overcome the memory and haunting legacy of Max, her husband and their papa, who drowned in a drunken leap from the dock as their ship pulled away from the German port.

A woman of strong passions, Helga operates Stein House for boarders of all stripes whose involvement in the rigors of a town on the edge of frontier influences and molds all their lives: the cruelties of yellow fever and slavery, the wrenching choices of Civil War and Reconstruction, murder, alcoholism and the devastation wrought by the hurricane of 1886.

Myra Hargrave McIlvain became a published storyteller with “Myra’s Merry Go Round,” a family humor column she wrote for the Victoria Advocate while she lived in Port Lavaca and raised her children. After moving to Austin, she authored historical markers that travelers see along Texas highways, and she wrote three books about Texas’ famous and infamous historical sites in her Texas Auto Trails series for the University of Texas Press. The Texas Historical Commission published Shadows on the Land, An Anthology of Texas Marker Stories, and Eakin Press published 6 Central Texas Auto Tours.

Stein House: http://tinyurl.com/kuweh3g