Author with Quincy roots digs through the history of territorial Washington

The marathon reading sessions paid off.

The year was 1964, and the librarian at Quincy High School was Mary Kazda, also the teacher of Pre-College English.

"She was a no-nonsense teacher who had us reading 'Anna Karenina,' 'Pride and Prejudice,' and 'Don Quixote,'" Candace Wellman wrote in an email. "She taught us to write in ways that when I got to Gonzaga for my first two years, I just breezed through composition class."

And now in her seventies, Wellman – now a resident of Whatcom County – has published three books, with the third one coming out this month.

The first two books dealt with the unspoken, unwritten story of Indian women in Whatcom County, where 90 percent of marriages between 1853 to about 1870, were cross-cultural. And yet, the history books tend to mention only white women, of which there were about half a dozen, Wellman said.

"All of the county officials and most of the army officers were married to native women," she said. "and yet these women were written out of history, in favor of six very nice white ladies."

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