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Comfort author Mae Durden-Nelson was inspired to write historical fiction to answer a young relative’s questions about their ancestors. Her own mother--“Momma”--lived in a time when young Texas families worked hard to meet life’s basic needs. Children today, who cannot imagine a world without television and running water, learn what it took to survive in the Texas Hill Country during the Depression. Vintage photos aid the reader’s imagination.
For years, librarian Mae Durden-Nelson wrote annual puppet shows, pageants and plays for students, one of which was published in Plays Inc. Magazine. She contributed to the Kerrville Daily Times and other periodicals, and she compiled a history of the Immanual Lutheran church in Comfort. Retired since 1997, she remains active on education and library boards.
I Just Called Her Momma became the first in a series of historical novels for young readers. Son Of Defiance tells the story behind the Treue Der Union monument in Comfort, Texas, where a period U.S. flag stands at half-staff in perpetuity, honoring the brave men who stood up for their beliefs against a hostile majority.
 Mae’s husband Bill Nelson contributed photographs for the series, photos of ordinary household items from the period. We learn that the Langes of Bernstein, Germany, arrived in Indianola in 1854 to travel by oxcart to Central Texas.
The series continues with Genesis Again - 1866 when, just after the Civil War, revolutionary ideas foment within the small German Freethinker community of Comfort.
When Saints Go Marching was commissioned by St. Boniface Episcopal Church in Comfort, and tells the story, in picture and oral history, of the pioneers who carried forth the Christian faith in a community that today lives in harmony.
Durden-Nelson is working on her next book Four Boys, Two Canoes, and The Guadalupe River for Eakin Press. This book chronicles the tale of four Comfort high school boys who set out in two canoes to row to the Gulf of Mexico via the Guadalupe River in 1971; due in the fall of 2007.
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Mae Durden-Nelson
