Truth in Fiction

About me

You’re looking at the photo of a happy woman, an amateur iPhone shot by my husband. We were sitting outside at a favorite restaurant in late spring Texas, 2026. It was quite warm, but there was a breeze. I’m aging, but aware of how blessed we have been.

We’ve re-re-retired after his 8 Navy pilot years, 24 years of his career as an international business executive, and 6 years as volunteer missionaries in the Brazilian Amazon. He was a pilot; I was a non-stop hostess to mission pilots, doctors, nurses, dentists, dental hygienists, and evangelists.

I had written short stories and a few magazine articles but never was interested in writing a novel–until after the mission years. Frequently annoyed by the negative, narrow-minded portrayal of missionaries in novels and movies, I wanted to create fiction which illustrated the characteristics of the missionaries I had known and worked with: dedicated to the loving God they served, sacrificial, working out marriage and parenting in a difficult place. Making choices, resolving quandaries, pinching pennies, falling in love (all my fiction has a romantic thread), and waging life.

After four novels based in the Brazilian Amazon, other stories came to mind and insisted on being written. Friends and fans often ask where the plots and characters come from. Sometimes it’s clear, as for Retreat to Shelter Creek. That’s inspired by a beloved relative’s miserable marriage and divorce. Rose by Another Name was the spin-off from a dream. But I have no idea where For the Love of a Child came from. It was a story that demanded to be written.

Meanwhile, quilting happens—