OSKAR AWARD: Best Secondary Female Character in Zina Abbott Books

This is day four of my "Oskar Awards" for different categories of characters in my own 2019 books. Today I am featuring the characters I consider to be my best secondary female characters in 2019:

Chases Quail in Charlie's Choice:
          Chases Quail, or She-who-chases-quail, is my heroine Meadowlark's aunt. She is known for being meddlesome and gossipy, but she looks out for the daughter of her deceased sister.  She stands up to Meadowlark's father who opposes Charlie Gray Cloud's request to marry his daughter.

Hilaina Dowd in Diantha: 
          Hilaina is actually a secondary heroine, since she played that role in the secondary romance in the novel. A chatterbox, she is a hard-working woman, fearless when standing up for what is right, a character who knows what she wants and goes after it. Once Buck returns to Wildcat Ridge, she wants him.

Drusilla Chilton in Virginia's Vocation:
          Drusilla is a middle-aged, busy-body boardinghouse owner who rules over her dining table and meddles in the lives of her boarders. Her curiosity drives her to follow Virginia and discover her secret vocation. As annoying as she can be, in the end, she helps Virginia not only succeed in her vocation, but she throws Virginia and Avery together to encourage the attraction she knows they feel toward each other.

Kate Flanagan in Two Sisters and the Christmas Groom:
          Kate signs up as a mail order bride as a means to get out of the dead-end poverty of the Irish sector in lower east Manhattan. After one potential groom chooses another woman, she submits to her sister's pleas to marry Michael, a miner in Jubilee Springs. She is also a secondary character in another of my novels, Nathan's Nurse.

Fiona Flanagan in Two Sisters and the Christmas Groom.
          The mother of both Annie and Kate, Fiona must deal with the poverty of lower east Manhattan, her husband's alcoholism, finding enough money beyond what her husband spends on his drinking to keep her family fed and educated. Although she is resigned to stay with her husband to the end, her goal is to get all of her children away from the greater New York area to a place where they can have a better life.

This was a tough decision for me. In so many respects, my secondary characters are what make my books. Chases Quail, although annoying, is admirable. "Salt of the earth" Hilaina I love. Mrs. Chilton was so effective with her meddling her character annoyed one my readers to the degree she quit reading the book and left me a terrible review. Because her choices will greatly affect others, Kate's must make some difficult decisions. Same with the character of her mother.

And my choice for my best secondary female character is:

Fiona Flanagan

          Where Kate is not staunch in her Catholic faith, Fiona is. Fiona is intent on her daughters marrying Catholic men. Although he is a less-than-admirable character, Fiona takes her marriage vows to her drunkard husband seriously. She will stay with him for better or worse, until death separates them. She struggles to find the means to educate her children so they can find work other than the poverty-level employment currently available to them, less and less however, since immigrating Italians and other minorities are competing for the same jobs. All the while, she scrambles to get her hands on enough money to keep everyone fed. She makes tough decisions to achieve her goal to help her children escape the dead-end poverty of lower east Manhattan.

To find the book description and purchase link,

please CLICK HERE.

Three reasons why Zina Abbott is skipping tomorrow for her series of "Oskar Awards" posts:

1.  It is Valentine's Day.
2.  I am featuring a guest author on my Zina Abbott Books blog on Valentine's Day.
3.  I will be gone on a day trip for Valentine's Day. My sweetheart and I are taking our box of See's Nuts and Chews and driving up to Sonora, a town that is 4-5 miles from Columbia and is a secondary locality in my latest book. It is time I peruse the Tuolumne County Historical Museum and other historical buildings in this early California gold rush community.

My Oskar Awards posts will continue on Saturday (in lieu of my Saturday Snippet) and conclude on the President's Day holiday, Monday, February 17th.

If you missed the Oskar Award for Zina Abbott's best 2019 hero post, CLICK HERE. 
If you missed the Oskar Award for Zina Abbott's best 2019 heroine post, CLICK HERE. 
If you missed the Oskar Award for Zina Abbott's best 2019 secondary male character post, CLICK HERE.