Debt

By Darlene Franklin

For my Pony Express date-in-history, I chose April 3, 1986, the date the U.S. National debt hit $2 trillion dollars. $2 trillion doesn’t look all that bad. Let me spell that out with zeroes: $2,000,000,000,000.00.

In 2017, we’re used to the national debt climbing. We can go to a website like http://www.usdebtclock.org/ to find out what the national debit is at this second (over $19 trillion). However, the debt rose and fell during most of the 20^th century. The 1980s were a period of growing debt, due to tax cuts and military spending.

            The debt reached a low point in 1974, under Richard Nixon, but has increased steadily since then (except until Presidents Carter and Clinton.) The 2007-08 financial crisis led to the exponential growth in recent years.

I chose the unpleasant topic of debt because my heroine’s father ran away from a gambling debt—and kept running. He keeps hoping that the next game will enable him to return home with honor. The Gambler’s Daughter, in The Pony Express Romance Collection, chronicles the end of that battle and the start of a new one—I won’t tell you more, to avoid giving away the story.