Description
I am an aspiring first-time writer, a retired educator who taught
children to read and encouraged them to write for over 35
years. As Jacqueline Kennedy stated,
“There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world.
Love of books is the best of all.”
As a child, my fondest memories involved reading books
and sharing them with my closest friends; I am addicted
to literature! Therefore, upon retirement, I decided to
embark on a journey to uncover the realities that made
my mother who she was. It has been a fascinating voyage,
and I am more knowledgeable about the history of the
twentieth century now than I was during all those years
in the classroom.
My mother is not famous, at least not in the usual sense.
Instead, she made inroads for other women, including
her three daughters, which resonate to this day as trailblazers.
The history surrounding her life is filled with incredible
victories on a global scale as well as simply personally.
Women were not appreciated as intelligent, able-bodied and
purposeful beings except (sometimes!) in the privacy of their
homes. Mother knew life for women had to change, and
she internalized proclamations from early feminists such
as Margaret Sanger who said, “Woman must not accept; she
must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up
around her; she must reverence that woman in her which
struggles for expression.”
My manuscript, Hitch Your Wagon to a Star, chronicles a
woman’s life from the poverty of the 1920’s through the
years of the Oil Boom, the Great Depression, and an amazing
emergence from those years based on the economy’s reaction
to World War II. It continues into the Post War years of the
“Red Scare” and the Baby Boom and culminates with
a personal change that engenders a new focus and a second
chance at life.
Because my book is historically true and based on research, I
am calling it a biographical novel. Names were not changed
and are real. The heart of my book is the truth that
possibilities exist and can become realities for those who are
sufficiently determined and is based on conquering difficulties
in the face of a daunting list of stumbling blocks. For the
protagonist, her successes gave rise to what Henri Frederic
Amiel described when he said, “Conquering any difficulty
always gives a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding
to one’s liberty."