Local author Nicki Ehrlich talks about her award-winning trilogy, and 'East of Eden.'

The Ellis River trilogy is complete. The third book in the series, about a 15-year-old Elli Cady and her adventures during the Civil War, was released on Oct. 20, and award-winning local author Nicki Ehrlich is having a launch party to celebrate Valley Home.

“It feels three times better than having one,” Ehrlich says when asked how it feels to have a trilogy out.

She didn’t plan on three books. But when she created her character and sent her on a long journey, she realized that Ellis and her horses didn’t go as far and as fast as planned, stalled by all the interesting places she encountered on the way from Tennessee  to California. So Ehrlich wrote Zephyr Trails, the second book in this historical fiction series. While writing it, she already knew there would be a third. Coming of age takes time.

Ehrlich grew up in Illinois and went to school in Colorado and Idaho. A horse-lover, she lived in Idaho, Oregon and Washington before settling down in California. Below is an interview with the author about her newest novel. She also shares interesting thoughts on John Steinbeck’s East of Eden and the Salinas Valley in particular, just after a new Netflix show based on the novel was released.

Weekly: So where is Ellis when we leave her at the end of Zephyr Trails?

Ehrlich: She's still in Missouri. She got from Tennessee to Missouri, and what I found was there was so much happening there at that time that it just kept going. The history was so great, the research was fun, and she never quite got out of the state. I wanted to get her to California, so that's how it became a trilogy.

Let's talk about how you're bringing her to California. 
Of course, this is also where you found your home. 

There's a lot of me there. But the key part is her dream to be part of the Pony Express. In the first book, she had a twin brother. She and her brother had always wanted to go west, like a lot of people back then, and they had always talked about and played with the idea of the Pony Express. The Pony Express only lasted 18 months back in 1860 and '61, so it was long gone by the time they were old enough to even get there. But in book two, she finds herself at one terminus of the Pony Express, which is St. Joseph, Missouri. Things happen so that she can eventually continue to travel west.

And can you tell us where in California she finds her home? 


The Pony Express Trail actually started and stopped in Sacramento, but some things happen and she ends up very close by here, in the Salinas Valley. It was really interesting reading about what this area was like in 1866, and just how quickly it was changing.

Would you care to share a bit of that? Because, like everybody else, we've been watching East of Eden here at the Weekly.

One of the things about the Salinas Valley in my book was that it was before the fields were all drained, so there were a lot of marshy wetlands here. A lot of the land that people thought was going to be great and productive was really just marshes. You never quite knew what you were going to get if you got land in Salinas back then. That changed a lot when they started draining the land off and making it into farms. It was very rich bottom land, of course, but that changed agriculture a lot.

I've been watching the show, too, and I've seen people say they kind of hate that it wasn't filmed in Salinas, that it was filmed in New Zealand. But gosh, how could they film it here now? It has changed so much. Back then, it was that wide open landscape with nothing there, like you can still find in New Zealand, I guess. That would be difficult to find here. All the fields are already plowed and planted, and it's all agriculturally developed, so I think it would have been difficult to film it here.

How old is Ellis when you finally leave her at the end of the third novel?

She will be about 16 going on 17. There's an epilogue at the end of the book which jumps ahead a few years, so she's maybe 20 by the end of the epilogue. I jumped ahead with the epilogue because I wanted it to include the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad, because that's eventually how she reconnects with people.

Are you ready to finally say goodbye to this character and close it as a trilogy, or do you never say never? How is it in your mind right now?

“Never say never” is kind of the thing. Yes, I'm ready to close it as a trilogy. However, there are a couple of characters that keep nudging me, and it's possible I would do a spinoff or two with those other characters if they keep nudging me the way they are.

So you're going to keep relying on the fact that you're quite an expert on this era now?

Well, I don't know if I consider myself an expert. I'm sure there are people out there who know a lot more about it than I do, but I surely know a lot more about it than I did before I started writing the books.

Nicki Ehrlich's Valley Home book launch takes place at 2:30-4pm Wednesday, Nov. 18 at Carmel Foundation’s Diamond Hall, 824 Lincoln Ave., Carmel. Ehrlich's books are available in local bookstores; visit nickiehrlich.com for more.