SUMMER HOUSE

Some of my favorite people live in SUMMER HOUSE. Nona, the grandmother, is the best. She’s sweet but shrewd, loving but alert, and her history is twined with my history and the history of my father and mother in WWII.

“Then we worked a long time with the 82nd Airborne Division, shoving the Jerries back with their famous Siegfried Line.”   This is from Herb Wright’s letter to his wife, Anne in my novel SUMMER HOUSE.  It’s an exact copy of my father’s letter to my  mother, Jane.

I had such a wonderful mother. Here she was about fifteen years ago, at her 90th birthday party in Kansas City.

I realize I have many grandmothers in my books. Eleanor in FAMILY SECRETS is a bit like my own mother, and probably a bit like me. I learned so much about love and joy from my mother and grandmothers.

This is a picture of my mother’s mother, Lottie Lou Clampitt, known to me as Nanny.

And now here I am with some of my grandchildren–their mother doesn’t want me to show faces, but I think you’ll be able to know which one is me.  🙂