Tales of a 1948 journey down Route 66

Jo Ann Wilburn is writing a novel, Tumbleweed, fictionalizing her family's 1948 journey from Oklahoma to California on Route 66. Her mother recorded her memories of the trip in a diary. Jo Ann has expanded on those memories with a great deal of research. But her publisher thinks she's got too much of a good thing:

Because of my need to cut the word count of my book down significantly from nearly 130,000 words, many cuts are those that added to historical value rather than story. It makes me sad because I like those historical references. I hope that by presenting some of those here, I can share an authentic 1948 trip down Route 66 and add a little extra as I go.

My parents made a real 1948 trip to California and my mother kept a diary, which I faithfully used in planning this fictional trip.

You can read these historical gems on her website starting here. There are now six installments, taking the family to Oklahoma City so far.

Although I've been driving Route 66 in Oklahoma for decades, through Jo Ann Wilburn's excerpts, I'm learning about people and places I had never heard of and discovering new details about familiar sites. A few examples: Seaba Station's little rock outhouse with the automatically flushing toilets; Washington Irving's camp site, Ulysses Grant Threatt and his filling station east of Luther.

Wilburn also has some blog entries discussing the process of writing her novel and the pain of making those cuts.

I hope you'll take time to visit her blog, catch up with the story so far, and drop Jo Ann a note to encourage her to continue to share these deep cuts (in the album sense as well as the novel sense) from her work. You can sign up to get email notifications of new entries as they're published.