About Rita Cleary ...
I was born on August 4, 1941 in New York City. My mother was première ballerina of the Metropolitan Opera, 1927 to 1935, and remembered horse-drawn carriages on the streets of New York. Her artist parents emigrated from France in 1891. My grandfather was called up in the French Army and died in the trenches as a lieutenant in the First World War.
My father, from St. Louis, Missouri, is a descendent of John Lysaght, who ran Lysaght Brothers which outfitted wagons for the trails west in St. Joseph, Missouri. John Darby, another ancestor was an early mayor (1836) of St. Louis and another, John Collins, crossed the continent with Lewis and Clark. My father collected books about the American West. It is from him, and from a love of horses, that I developed my interest in American History.
I maintain membership in various historical societies: The Oyster Bay Historical Society, The Cedar Swamp Historical Society, The New York Historical Society, the Missouri Historical Society, The Montana Historical Society, The Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation, The Western History Association, The Society for the Preservation of Long Island Antiquities, The Friends of Planting Fields, The Friends of Raynham Hall, The Townsend Society of America and have served on the Boards of the East Woods School, The Theodore Roosevelt Audubon Sanctuary and Planting Fields State Park.
My father rewarded good schoolwork with horseback riding lessons and as a result, I excelled at both. I earned a B.A. in French at Manhattanville
College, went from there to Harvard University for an M.A.T., then taught French at Garden City, New York Senior High.
I am married to John Cleary and have three children, Mark aged 33, Sharon aged 32 and Jim aged 28. Jim has Muscular Dystrophy and is permanently wheelchaired. He was my source for Joey in Sorrel (my first book and finalist, best first novel, Western Writers of America Spur Awards, 1993). Sorrel has been submitted for reprinting in 2006.
Horseback riding has been my psychiatrist and health club. Horses have carried me up mountains, through rivers and across deserts. I’ve experienced winter weather in North Dakota, mountain peaks in Colorado, open prairie in Wyoming and impenetrable Texas thickets the way my characters would have seen them in the old days, from horseback.
In my books, I try to recreate life as it was lived while sticking close to historical fact. I study the history. Time in libraries, particularly manuscript libraries, is all-important. Then I insert what I imagine is the human story that often went unrecorded: the ambitions, loves, fears and dogged perseverance of men and women whose actions created the history.
After Sorrel, I wrote Gold Town, a post Civil War novel about Virginia City, Montana, the largest placer gold strike in the west. Spies and Tories about The Revolutionary War and Robert Townsend of Oyster Bay, Long Island, followed. Sunstone Press of Santa Fe, New Mexico published these first three novels and rights to these have since reverted to me.
Five Star Western, an imprint of Thorndike Press now publishes my Lewis and Clark series. The second and third, Charbonneau’s Gold, and Calling the Wind are presently available in hardcover from Five Star. Centerpoint has published large-print editions.
Five Star has also published two of my short stories in anthologies entitled The First Five Star Western Corral and No Place for a Lady. I’ve also written articles for True West Magazine, and We Proceeded On, the Journal of the Lewis and Clark Trail Heritage Foundation and The Roundup of Western Writers. “Charbonneau Reconsidered,” (Feb. 2000, We Proceeded On) has been cited by noted university historians. And I wrote a bi-monthly president’s column for The Roundup of Western Writers.
I’ve received much encouragement from my fellow writers in Western Writers of America and am a past president and current board member. WWA is the oldest of the writers’ organizations, founded in 1952. I’ve acted as judge of novels and biographies for Western Writers’ Spur Awards and also for the Western Heritage Center/National Cowboy Hall of Fame’s Western Heritage Awards.
And in June of 2006, the New York State Legislature recognized me with a lovely citation as a New York Woman of Distinction in an impressive ceremony in the “well” of the NYS Legislative Office Building. I’m grateful to all.
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