The books I have written do not belong to a specific genre or class of books. Instead, each represents a different phase of my life.
In my twenties I worked as a VISTA Volunteer, holding seminars about alternative energy for the residents of rural Kansas. Following my year as a volunteer, I formed a company with an inventor who had attended one of my classes, then went home and invented a small, very efficient still for use in small-scale farming operations. In addition to manufacturing and selling stills, carrying out continuing research into the production of fuel alcohol, and educating farmers and others in a position to operate small-scale production facilities, we wrote The Alcohol Fuel Handbook a book on the production of fuel alcohol.
This book was written in 1979 – 1980 The information on the financial feasibility of producing alcohol and adjusting your carburetor to use the fuel effectively is outdated, but the science of production and use of the byproducts holds true.
When my partner died suddenly, and the tax situation for the production of fuel alcohol changed just as suddenly with the advent of a new administration in Washington I went back to school, got a Ph.D. in horticulture, then a job as Urban Horticulture Specialist with the New Mexico Cooperative Extension Service. For over ten years I wrote a weekly column that was distributed to newspapers throughout New Mexico. On leaving that job I wrote High Desert Yards and Gardens, presenting the information most requested through the column. This book was published by the University of New Mexico Press.
In the late 1990s, my husband and I adopted three girls, biological siblings, from Ukraine. We were among the first foreigners to adopt children from Ukraine and the first to adopt them from the Kirovograd region. We spent months in Ukraine, over a period of two and a half years, to complete the process. We had the support of many people, both in Ukraine and the United States. Rainbows from Heaven is the story of the trials and triumphs of that adoption process.
A few years later my youngest daughter asked me on the way to her kindergarten class “What would happen if the whole world turned upside down except me?” We started coming up with some answers. When we inadvertently made some rhymes the concept for the book was born.
That summer, on a road trip to Grandma’s house in Kansas, we wrote the children’s book The World Upside Down. A friend illustrated it for us and we self-published the book, a whimsical rhyme written for six- to seven-year-olds.
I am currently working on a trilogy of books set during World War II. Book One, Ninety Day Wonder, the story of a schoolteacher, drafted before the war started to serve a one-year stint in the army, but in for the duration when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. He is sent to Officer’s Training School, and ninety days later, is commisioned as an Anti Aircraft ARtillery Officer. After preparing their troops his battalion is sent to the Pacific.
Book Two, Moonlight Cavalry, follows Eugene Sinclaire as he hops from island to island in the Southwest Pacific.,arriving in the Phillipines to observe MacArthur stiding ashore and declaring “I have returned!” Gene develops the fortitude to lead his battery and survive this hell on earth That is, untila special mission almost proves to be his undoing.
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I am also beginning research for a biography of Arthur St. Clair, a revolutionary war Major General, President of the United States in Congress Assembled in 1789, when they decided they needed a new constitution, and governor of the Northwest Territories, which included Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. See the blog for our adventures on our family research trip.