All About Hope Paperback - 2014

Inspired by the adventures I had living on my grandfather's ranch in a beautiful Wyoming valley, my first written stories evolved from my summer escapades with my male cousins. One of our favorite games was 'hide and seek, ' on horseback. Somehow, I was always the hunted and learned very quickly how to evade and outwit my pursuers, as I raced ahead of them into canyons on my sure- footed Pinto pony, Betsy. My stories changed as I grew older and my attitude softened towards boys. I wrote about courageous cowboys saving their heroines from danger. I secretly, was always the heroine being saved. As a Midwesterner, living in a suburb of Chicago, I was fortunate to have parents who enjoyed enhancing my classroom education with a variety of cultural events available in a large city. Unwittingly, I learned how to live in a more complicated world and my writing reflected my larger view. Becoming a teenager, in high school, my focus was two-fold, preparing for college and boyfriends. My stories always had the heroine dating the most popular boy in the class and guess who the heroine was? During those years, I also wrote stories, drawing on my experiences I had living with my sister, her veterinarian husband, their five children and the young farm boys who worked for my brother-in-law. Absorbing the farm culture, first hand, helped me create some of the characters in my books and showcase the values of courage and determination of Midwestern farmers. Because my father, as a physician, valued an education, as was expected, I applied and was accepted at Iowa State University several years after WWII. Although most of my courses were scientific in nature, all my electives were English or writing courses. During graduate school, I wrote a great deal to complete my master's program in school psychology. Finally, my writing skills were truly honed over my twenty years as a teacher of special needs children, chronicling my students' emotional and educational development for their parents, teachers and administration. Along with my own two children, my students taught me more than I ever taught them, with their playfulness and sense of humor. I drew on those memories of our many spirited conversations for the characters of the children in this series of books. Instead of memoirs, I chose to write, Maria's Awakening, which was much more fun and still incorporates some of the history of that very challenging time, along with experiences of people I have known in my life.