Ollie's Gift

1958. What happens when a privileged young white child journeys from her home in New England to a Southern world of racism and poverty she never knew existed? No kid wanted to learn about life’s harsh realities firsthand the way Marie did, any more than the children in that Alabama neighborhood wanted to live them firsthand. But everything happens for a reason. And the reason, for Marie - was Ollie.

Ollie’s gift is an emotionally rich and heart-warming personal retelling of a major life event that shaped a young girl’s worldview. It captures the child’s first impressions of racism and poverty, and uses dialect and speech to place the reader in the societies and era in which the story took place.

Maria Roncari rarely leaves you wondering what she really meant to say - in person or on paper. She discovered her writer’s voice at age thirteen when her parents refused an agent’s offer to bring her to NYC to dance. Armed with a sharpened No.2 pencil, Maria wrote the eighth grade spring play that year, (that’s right) about a dad who dashed his daughter’s dreams and hilariously suffered the consequences for it. Those dashed dreams began her love affair with writing.

Maria holds a Bachelor’s degree in Communication and for more than four decades has successfully written, taught, produced, and directed in the arenas of education, entertainment, and communication. For nine years, she has skillfully written and officiated hundreds of personal Love Story Marriage Ceremonies; and the end of 2016 begins her fourteenth year in Entertainment at Universal Orlando.

Discerning the ever-changing demons and delights of the human condition is the flame that keeps Maria’s passion to write burning. For this author, every one of us is a living, breathing story just waiting to be told – and life is the kaleidoscopic background for the adventures.