Early photos show a young child, hunched over a book, my eyes intent on the page as I copy words with a stubby pencil. More books are piled next to me and at my feet. Later photos morph from sitting on my grandmother’s front stoop in worn corduroys and a wool jacket to an American teen in a pink mini skirt and white go-go boots, and later to a wife, mother, and business owner.
Born in a small town close to Frankfurt, I spent my first six years in the loving arms of my Oma while my mother worked abroad in a dance troupe, sending money home. Right before my sixth birthday, she returned home as the wife of an American Army officer, who adopted me.
I learned English in first grade at Frankfurt American School #1, and distinctly remember the way those delightful, unfamiliar words rolled on my German tongue. This early love eventually translated into an English Lit degree from the University of South Florida in St. Pete, bolstered by high hopes of continuing in academia while writing The Great American Novel. Life, and bills, intervened. After moving to Orlando, I plunged into the business world and writing became a hobby. Twenty-five years flew by: a fulfilling marriage, the birth of a son, and the creation of a family business. It was now time to return to my first love. Combining my passions for dogs and children, I wrote and published the award-winning early reader Ethel the Backyard Dog in 2014. Sammy the Lucky Dog followed in 2015, another early reader that chronicled the mishaps of my own beloved Jack Russell Terrier. You can find them on Amazon.
Soon the form of creative nonfiction grabbed my attention, especially memoir. I read powerful stories and books by Michael Ondaatje, Rebecca Solnit, Jeanette Walls, Annie Dillard, and Alexandra Fuller. The practice of writing now began in earnest. My essays have been published in literary journals, anthologies and blogs. Read all of my Essays.
On a trip to visit my German family in 2016, I heard a long-held secret about my maternal family, with tentacles that reach back to Hitler. This revelation prompted me to find the biological father I did not know, and rang his doorbell to introduce myself. Discovering my family’s true lineage, my own father, and a new image of the mother I thought I knew, the stories I collected have become a recently completed memoir, told within the backdrop of WWII Germany.
