I’m at Costco when I see you from the back. You’re at the front of the store in a long checkout line. Slender, lithe, gorgeous tan with a thick thatch of gray, wearing your violet colored polo, a color most…Continue Reading →
What fun we had discussing A City of Women, a suspenseful novel set in 1943 Berlin. And again I am reminded how literary taste is so individual. I chose this book because I love it and believe the author was…Continue Reading →
On the morning of February 14, 2016, I opened The Washington Post and glanced at a headline about Justice Scalia being a leading conservative and decided this was an article about the Supreme Court’s latest decision. Ho-hum. Not until I…Continue Reading →
My husband did not come into 2016 with me. I have written of his death to various institutions in settling his estate, yet his leaving has not sunk into the dark soil of my heart. I still expect to see his face at…Continue Reading →
I learned the difference between fiction and nonfiction young. This painful, shameful lesson occurred at the time of my greatest triumph: the night I was crowned 4-H Dairy Princess of Onslow County. The pomp and gold satin will come later,…Continue Reading →
I have lived the story behind my novel, The Last Government Girl. My mother Helen Edward Smith, a twenty-year-old college graduate, with a year of teaching high school behind her, boarded the train for Washington in May of 1944. Earlier…Continue Reading →
I am happiest when I am reading compulsively. And after having read a lot not by choice, for classes taken, classes taught, even for book group, I like to go where my tastes take me. I am deep into WWII,…Continue Reading →
Our mystery/ suspense book group at One More Page Books travelled to the wild and woolly Shetland Islands, an archipelago of Scotland, via Ann Cleeves’ award-winning mystery Raven Black. Set in modern day, Raven Black introduces a host of characters…Continue Reading →
