A New Story Begins at Jamestown

This year, as America marks its 250th anniversary, a milestone honoring a nation forged in sacrifice and hope, I cannot think of a more fitting moment to pull back the curtain on what I have been quietly working on behind the scenes.

When we celebrate the birth of this country, our minds naturally drift to 1776. But the roots of the American Revolution reach back more than a century, to the mud of our very first settlements. To truly understand the division that fractured the colonies, you have to go back to the very beginning.

Beyond the palisades, ordinary families built homes, raised children, and struggled to survive in England's first permanent colony in North America.

I am stepping onto entirely new soil. I am beginning a brand-new historical fiction series, and this time, the roots belong to my husband's family.

As I looked back through photographs from some of our earliest trips together, I couldn't help but smile. Years before we ever traced his family tree, we had already walked the streets of Jamestown and stood on the battlefields of Yorktown, completely unaware that we were standing where his family's American story began. Looking back now, those photographs feel less like vacation memories and more like the first pages of a story we hadn't yet discovered.

Long before we traced my husband's family roots to colonial Virginia, we had already walked the decks of Jamestown together without realizing the journey we had begun.

Their American story did not begin on the windswept northern prairie. It began in the muddy, precarious settlement of Jamestown, where survival itself was a daily battle. Long before independence was declared in Philadelphia, the choices of those early generations were quietly shaping a massive conflict to come. By the time the American Revolution arrived, this single family tree stood deeply divided

One branch descended from Jacobite rebels. These were men and women who backed a doomed uprising in Scotland, survived its brutal aftermath, and crossed the Atlantic seeking a life where no one knew their names, their scars, or their politics.

The other branch became staunch British Loyalists, remaining fiercely faithful to the Crown that the Jacobites had once fought against.

As the colonies moved toward revolution, families often found themselves divided by allegiance, with neighbors, and sometimes relatives, choosing opposite sides of the coming conflict.

The American Revolution was never a tidy war between two distinct sides. It was a civil war that reached into homes, fracturing communities, brothers, and families. History often reduces these people to simple labels like Patriot, Loyalist, Rebel, or Traitor, but real life was never that clean. That complex, human struggle is the story I want to tell.

I am endlessly fascinated by the places where history refuses to fit neatly into textbook categories. The farther I dig into genealogy, the more I discover that ordinary people rarely lived inside the clean lines drawn for them. They were simply trying to survive extraordinary times.

One of my own photographs from Yorktown, where the American Revolution reached its decisive conclusion nearly two centuries after Jamestown was founded.

Whether they were Jacobites fleeing political persecution, Loyalists watching their world collapse, Norwegian immigrants carving farms from the Dakota prairie, or the generations whose stories fill The Unbreakable Anchor, they all faced the same timeless question: How do you build a future when the world you once knew has disappeared?

That question is the heartbeat behind everything I write. I will be sharing the official title and more details very soon, but I wanted you to be the very first to know that another voyage has begun.

The Horizon: Fall 2026 and Beyond

While this new series takes shape, the stories you are already following remain my highest priority.

The Unbreakable Anchor (Coming Fall 2026)

This book tells the true story of my family as we navigated military life, parenthood, profound challenges, and unexpected triumphs. It remains the emotional anchor beneath everything else I write because every family story I tell, in one way or another, begins with my own. 

The Sunstone Path (Coming 2027)

Next year brings the first novel in my historical series, following my own great-grandparents as they leave Norway behind to build a life on the unforgiving Dakota prairie. It is a story of immigration, perseverance, and the quiet courage required to begin again.

From the fragile clearings of Jamestown to the battlefields of the Revolution, this new saga follows one family as America struggles to discover who it will become. But the Revolution is only the beginning. This journey will continue across generations as one family's story unfolds alongside the history of a growing nation.

One book launches this fall. Another takes shape for next year. And an entirely new American saga is just beginning to unfold.

Thank you for walking these long, winding paths with me. The journey is just getting started.

If you'd like to follow along, I invite you to subscribe to my newsletter for future updates.

— TJ Nilsdatter