Out of Arkansas

This is the story of a woman's life written in a series of autobiographical sketches. The depression years in rural Arkansas and Texas were an essential part of her formative years and the details she gives of that era are fascinating reading. Her complex, extended family is also an important part of her story and she occasionally stops to give us vivid portraits of some of the main characters among her numerous nieces, nephews, aunts and cousins (who were numbered by the dozens). As her life unfolds there are accounts of the cultural shock of moving to California, of the effect of the '60's revolution on her marriage, of her experience of motherhood, and of the businesses in which she and her husband engaged. Their retirement years in Mexico introduce still another cultural backdrop, which she paints in her vivid way with bold colors.

When at last this intensely reactive woman approaches old age she finds herself in a veterans' home in California. After first rebelling, she decides that she likes old age and that the unique features of her new home open possibilities she had never before considered. The death of her husband just a year after moving to the Veterans' Home was a tragedy and a trauma. Eventually it pushed her further in the direction of considering new possibilities for herself. She had always been a book lover and a writer of stories and now she decided to put a finishing touch on her life by publishing a book of her own. Her it is a finished product.