This shy author hasn’t promoted her book enough. My friend just talked me into having a bookclub meeting on my own book:

This is a footnoted historical novel with footnotes that tell you what is true and what is made up.

We had so much fun, I want to share it with everyone.

My first statement to the group was: Every family has a story, most go untold. I was lucky, mother left paintings, told me stories and left letters, on which I based the book.

We took passages from the book and shared our family memories and experiences with that topic.

We started with proper language, mentioned on page 20. Sheila was taught to say number 1 and number 2, never pee and poo. What words did your family use for these little problems? (The responses from my Australian participants were varied and often hilarious).

Page 37 family secrets. Sometimes too much to share.

Page 90. The awful way they didn’t tell young girls about menstruation. Was this explained to you or your mother? (Most of this group had been told, but their mothers had not.)

Page 107 The shame of young girls who got pregnant and wouldn’t tell anyone.

Page 118 Did you hear stories from your family about the depression?

Page 150… There is a lot of discussion about American politics in the 1930s and 1940s. Do you find this boring? (My Australian readers found it very interesting.)

Page 166. Roosevelt’s speech on the 4 Freedoms. Is this something we still need today?

Page 229. We all agreed that we were lucky not having to stay in bed for a week when having a baby.

Page 167 Note that the United States came very close to signing an agreement with Hitler instead of helping Britain.

Page 182. All women over 30 need girdles? Do women over 30 need girdles? (This group of 60 plus years did not wear girdles.)

Page 269 A principal tried to seduce widowed Sheila. Men in those days felt they had the right to any single woman.

Page 282 I read aloud this message from Sheila’s Dr. Foot when she asked why she had such a difficult life: If we cannot answer “why”, we can accept a philosophy which counsels us to healthy-mindedness, an acceptance of life as it is, strangely sweet and standard richly bitter, and which teaches us to respond to it as a challenge, to play our part as well and as bravely as we know how, to seek for all the beauty and joy and goodness we can find, and to avoid the tragic moral mistakes that tempt us and, whatever happens, to eschew self-pity. What do you think of this advice?

The final chapter was Sheila’s message of Hope. We did not discuss it aloud.

Throughout this blog are many paintings and messages from that book. Sheila lived to share the beauty, joy and goodness of life.