For one writer who grew up in Texarkana, the city’s early days were fertile ground for a historical novel.

Patricia Lieb once called Texarkana, Ark., home as a member of Arkansas High School’s class of 1960, growing up with the maiden name Shipp and rooting for the Hogs.

From there, Lieb, now a Florida resident, became a writer who has won awards for her reporting and has seen her books published, the latest of which is called “Bridged by Love,” a historical novel set in Texarkana circa 1886 and recently published by Asylett Press.

Lieb chose as her heroines two young women who become friends trying to survive as Texarkana, in its infancy, is growing: Kathryn, a divorced lumberjack who lives with her mother and is in love with a man while another has fallen in love with her; and Shanna, a Native American woman who escapes life as a slave and has a newborn son to care for as she tries to return to her family in Indian Territory.

“Texarkana is the main area. That’s where Kathryn takes her wood to the sawmill, which is a fictitious sawmill in Texarkana,” said Lieb. The man she loves is a bookkeeper in town, while her business partner is in love with her. “She comes in practically every day with logs with her partner Leonard.”

Lieb, armed with information from a Texarkana friend (Wayne Adcock) and the Museum of Regional History, pictures Texarkana in its early days. Though she grew up here, she needed to research.

“I read as much as I could about Texarkana. Even though I lived there, it wasn’t 1886,” she said.

She writes in one passage about the town’s connection to the railroad: “Texarkana had grown profusely since becoming incorporated some 10 or so years ago—to the tune of about 8,000 people, give or take. Most of the growth was due to the building of the Texas and Pacific Railroad, which ran parallel with Front Street on the south end of town. Then came an abundance of other train lines, thus generating much business to the twin cities.”

Elsewhere, she pictures the hustle and bustle on a young Broad Street: “This, like other streets in town, seemed to grow bigger every day with businesses booming from all corners. Tall brick and stucco buildings blocked the western horizon. People, horses, cotton carts, milk wagons and horse trolleys paraded like cow herds.”

Part of her research involved investigating old newspaper clips to get a feel for the time. Some of those stories made it into the book, she said, such as one tale about a man being arrested for branding his teenage wife or Texarkana growing to a size where it needed its own police force, Lieb said.

As a writer, she sought to imagine herself in the setting.

“I love history and I love writing, and I think I just felt the earth, the ground. I just felt myself in that period when I wrote that book ... as I wrote the book I could see everything,” said Lieb.

But it’s the characters who are the focus of her historical novel, picturing two independent women at a time when they didn’t have a lot of power.

“Most of the time women are strong. A lot of them just don’t know it,” said Lieb. “Kathryn needed to be strong because of the life she was living, and Shanna was strong because of the life she was forced into.”

Lieb said the inspiration for Kathryn and the plot itself came from her family’s history.

She said when her grandma was a young woman, a family member had a child with a Native American girl and the child was raised by Lieb’s grandmother and great-grandmother. In “Bridged by Love,” Shanna must leave her young baby with Kathryn while she journeys to find her family.

Lieb imagined her grandmother at age 27 with a fiery personality and how these characters would have felt at the time in this kind of situation.

“That’s what inspired the plot,” said Lieb, who was a reporter and features writer for The Suncoast News in New Port Richey, Fla. She covered the crime beat for the Daily Sun-Journal in Brookville, Fla., and wrote for two Illinois papers, the Daily Journal and Bourbonnais Herald.

“I started writing for detective magazines,” said Lieb. Her “Murders in the Swampland” is a book of true crime reporting from Hernando County, Fla.

Married at 24, she’d only worked in factories until then but her husband encouraged her to write. After her husband passed away at age 42, Lieb figured what she knew how to do was write. She started at a Kankakee, Ill., newspaper and went from there.

She says she feels lucky in her writing career. She didn’t think she was smart enough to be a news reporter but she’s been honored for her work.

“I’m doing what I love to do,” said Lieb.