About
Deborah Hufford

Deborah is an award-winning

author and magazine editor

who is now a debut novelist

Deborah Hufford is an award-winning author and magazine editor with a passion for indigenous and frontier history and horses. Her popular Notes From the Frontier blog with 100,000+ readers has led to an upcoming novel, Blood to Rubies!

About the book

Growing Up
and Education

Growing up as an Iowa farm girl, rodeo queen and voracious reader, Deborah rode her childhood horse, Sundance, over country gravel roads and along forested river valleys, exploring old pioneer cemeteries, abandoned stagecoach traces, and searching for arrowheads. Her love of land, lore and literature fired her writing muse. She has a Bachelor's Double Major in English and Journalism and a Master's in Journalism from the University of Iowa.

Teaching and Publishing Credits

Deborah taught printing and publication design to students of the Iowa's Writer's Workshop at the Iowa Center for the Book. Later, she taught writing and publishing at Northwestern University, Marquette University and Mount Mary University. Her extensive publishing career began at Better Homes & Gardens and includes credits in New York Times Magazine, New York Times, Connoisseur, many other titles, and served as publisher of The Writer's Handbook.

Social Justice
Volunteer
Work & Writing

Deeply devoted to social justice, especially for veterans, women and children, refugees, Native Americans, and humane treatment of animals, she has served on boards and donated her fundraising skills

to Chief Joseph Foundation, Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW), Homeless Veterans Initiative, Homeless Women Veterans, Humane Society, International Learning Center, Women's Political Caucus, and other nonprofits.

And I
love all
critters!

My childhood horse, Sundance

Sundance was a DREAM horse--he could have been a Hollywood trick horse--the smartest horse I ever knew. He was famous in our our hometown and led the big rodeo parade when I was rodeo queen. When he died, our town news-paper ran his obituary💙

Adopted English Setters

My two big boys, adopted English Setters, Howie and Reggie. They are my faithful writing companions, usually asleep at my feet while I write. Both run in their dreams! My love of animals shows up often in my novel, Blood to Rubies.

Reggie

Reggie, one of my rescued English Setters, pointing out missing Oxford commas in my novel. He is my dogged" editor!

Rosie

My buddy, Rosie, the Mammoth watch donkey, at Holyland Donkey Haven in Wisconsin , where I have volunteered. She protected livestock in northern Wisconsin, where she fought off wolves, coyotes and a grown bear. My kind of gal!

You'll find many of the above themes in my novel

Blood to Rubies
is now here!
Available now to preorder through
Amazon and all bookstores

Deborah's debut novel, Blood to Rubies, is already critically acclaimed by NYT bestselling authors as "brilliant," "crushing," "rhapsodic," "gritty," and "sensuous." A scorching saga that weaves indigenous and pioneer history, strong women and the heroic battle of Chief Joseph to save his Nez Perce people together in a heartbreaking convergences of fates.

Connect with me on DeborahHufford.com, NotesfromtheFrontiercom, Facebook, and Instagram.