My sister, award-winning historical romance writer Pamela Morsi, died a few days before Christmas, leaving behind a family of loving children and grandchildren, longtime friends and me, her newly widowed sister.
She’d been battling a terminal genetic disease for more than a year, but she lingered longer than many expected to make sure I was going to be all right.
She also left a legacy of 29 novels that transformed popular women’s fiction in America.
A past president of the San Antonio Romance Writers, my sister earned national accolades for creating down-to-earth, honest heroes who did not rescue beautiful damsels in distress and heroines who were often spinsters or widows, not that beautiful but maybe saddled with running the broken-down farm or finding a way to drag the family out of poverty.
Rendezvous said her novels “transformed everyday people into memorable giants.”
Publishers’ Weekly called her “the Garrison Keillor of romance fiction,” but her range went far beyond Keillor’s Lake Wobegon.
Before she launched a new book, Pam did extensive research — traveling in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana and Texas to dig into the crannies of communities that had rarely or never been used as romantic settings.
She created stories that revealed the humor in virtually every situation — one of my favorites is set in Dead Dog, Okla. — and what she called the “honor in everyday people.” Both were trademarks of everything she wrote.
Pam was born in Muskogee, Okla., and grew up in the oil fields. She lived in Spain and Charleston, S.C., before coming to San Antonio in 1992.
She had a degree in humanities from Oklahoma State University and a master’s in library science from the University of Missouri.
She began writing stories as a child and never stopped. In 1991, writing at a dressing table in her bedroom after her workday and making dinner for her two children, Pam completed her first novel.
I was living in New York City and cautioned her not to get her hopes up. I told her the chance of her novel even being read were slim and the odds of it being published were infinitesimal.
I worried my sister’s dreams would break her heart, but I was wrong. Her book was bought by a major New York publishing house, which offered her a three-book contract.
She became a USA Today bestselling author, a two-time winner of the Romance Writers of America Award for best historical fiction, and the winner of the Maggie Prize for Historical Fiction, the Reviewers Choice and a bestselling award from WaldenBooks.
“Simple Jess,” frequently referred to as her masterpiece, featured a hero with cognitive challenges. It was included on the Los Angeles Times list of best love stories of all times.
The Miami Herald said her books “read like fables or parables, grounded in sweetness and human fallibility.”
My sister called herself “a cheerleader for all things human.”
If her readers were dazzled by the authenticity of her writing, she was not. She once told a critic: “The absolutely most well-written character can’t hold a candle to the complexity of the most ordinary human.”
She loved San Antonio. Several of her novels are set in the Alamo City, and she dedicated one of them to the wonderful folks at Delicious Tamales on the South Side.
She died in her home in Alamo Heights in a house built in the 1920s that she and her late husband, Bill Kiel, had restored to its original glory. She chose the Bishop Jones Center at the top of Torcido Drive to be her final resting place, alongside her husband.
Our city has always been home to so many wonderful writers and artists. We have lost one who was not just very important to me but whose body of work will always be remembered for the lessons it teaches about laughter, love and the “honor in everyday people.”
Sherry Sylvester is a former political writer for the San Antonio Express-News and a distinguished senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
Jan 3, 2025
Sherry Sylvester
