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Nicki Ehrlich
ALLi Author Member
Location: United States of America (the)
Genres: Literary Fiction, New Adult, General Fiction, Historical Fiction
Skills: Press/Media Interview, Reading/Literary Event, Self-publishing Workshop/Training, Speaking Engagement/Lecture, Writing Workshop
Nicki Ehrlich grew up in Southern Illinois before attending college at the University of Denver and later, Idaho State University, where she graduated with a B.A. in Philosophy/English. After living ten “horse-rich” years in Idaho, she moved on to Oregon, and later Washington, where she realized she had unwittingly traveled the Oregon Trail.
Nicki's debut novel, Ellis River, won the Independent Book Publishers Association's Bill Fisher Award for Best First Book - Fiction. The novel was also a finalist for the Eric Hoffer First Horizons Award, received an Honorable Mention for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize, and was a semi-finalist for the Publishers Weekly Booklife Prize. The second book of the trilogy, Zephyr Trails, released on June 25, 2024.
Nicki has won additional awards for her poetry and creative writing, including the Writer’s Digest Annual Poetry Awards and the Ray Fabrizio Memorial Award. She holds a Certificate in Creative Writing from Monterey Peninsula College, is a member of the Central Coast branch of the California Writers Club, a member of the Independent Book Publishers Association, and a member of the Alliance for Independent Authors. She currently lives on California’s inspiring central coast where she is at work on the final book of the Ellis River trilogy.
You can find Nicki at: NickiEhrlich.com, Instagram, and Goodreads.
Nicki Ehrlich's books
Ellis River
The Civil War scattered her family and now, along with her beloved horse, a young woman must travel across a war-torn country to collect what’s left of her life.
For fifteen-year-old Ellis Cady, life has gone quiet on her western Tennessee homestead. Her father and older brother left to sell horses to the army two years earlier and never returned. She watched her mother’s health decline, finally succumbing to a broken heart. Her twin brother left in search of their father, and while he was gone neighbors moved out of their Quaker community, searching for peace ahead of the final sweep of war.
Ellis is left with nothing but the company of the remaining horses and the letters and journals she continues to write, trying to make sense of a desolate world. A small band of soldiers rides through to claim the last of the herd, and hope for the return of life as she knew it, evaporates like the mist on the river.
When the head-strong mare, Billie, returns, having escaped from the soldiers, Ellis takes it as a sign to leave. Disguised as a boy, for safety and comfort, she rides off to find her twin. Though war refuses to fade, Ellis stumbles upon an unlikely group of rescuers who teach her family is more than blood, and love has no limits.
Zephyr Trails
The fine line between friends and enemies blurs as sixteen-year-old Ellis Cady sets out to reach the new frontier of post-Civil War America.
After waiting out the winter at the Cady ranch in southern Missouri, hope blooms in the Spring of 1866. Ellis receives news of a mysterious man arriving in St. Louis. Will she find her father alive and well, or finally put his memory to rest?
Grasping at the illusive promise of her father’s whereabouts, Ellis is distracted by the intrepid trick rider, Jimmie, a woman who rides with Levi Jack’s Wild West Exhibition. Then, talk of reinstating a messenger service akin to the Pony Express rekindles a faded dream. Since the war’s devastation, important letters and messages still need to get through a Western landscape governed by Indians and outlaws. When an untimely epidemic threatens, Ellis finds herself back in the saddle, a young woman and her horse on a perilous trail.