The stories of nine early Baha'i believers: Lua Getsinger, an actress and singer; Mary Maxwell, a fragile beauty; Martha Root, a journalist; Hyde Dunn, a travelling salesman; Keith Ransom-Kehler, a brilliant socialite and one-time Christian minister; Susan Moody, a medical doctor; Dorothy Baker, an Ohio housewife; Ella Bailey, a school-teacher; and Marion Jack, a landscape portrait painter- all were transformed by their response to Abdu'l-Baha
Janet Ruhe-Schoen, born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in the 1950s, widened her horizons to include a long residency in Latin America -- Peru and Chile -- as well as a sojourn on the Mescalero Apache homelands in New Mexico, and travel in Europe and the Middle East. She currently lives in New York State.
She worked for many years as a journalist for newspapers and magazines, concentrating on environmental investigative reporting while in Chile. But all of her major books to date are biographies of outstanding Baha'is, for, ever since she embraced the Baha'i Faith at the age of 18, she's been fascinated with its deep history and the many-faceted personalities of its greatest adherents.
Her new biography, Rejoice in My Gladness: The Life of Tahirih, published by the Baha'i Publishing Trust, 2011, relates the passionate and dramatic life of Tahirih Qurratu'l-Ayn, the Iranian poet-mystic who unveiled herself before a gathering of men in 1848 and sacrificed her life shortly afterward in her continuing insistence on freedom of faith for herself, women, and humanity. The book demonstrates Tahirih's universal importance to human development.
A Love Which Does Not Wait, brought out by Palabra Publications in 1998, is now in its second edition as a paperback. With its nine warmly human life-sketches of Baha'i teachers who pioneered world peace, it has become a favorite among Baha'i readers, with people who are not Baha'is chiming in to say that they are inspired by it, too.
The first biography Ruhe-Schoen ever wrote, An Enchantment of the Heart/ Un Encanto del Corazon, a portrait of Marcia Steward, early establisher of the Baha'i community of Chile, was initially published in Spanish in Santiago. It's now available bilingually online at www.chilean-temple.org. The Nightingale, Baha'u'llah/ El Ruisenor, Baha'u'llah, stories of the founder of the Baha'i Faith, originally written in Spanish, is available at www.badipublishing.com.
Research for Rejoice in My Gladness led Ruhe-Schoen to a study of Farsi and Rejoice in My Gladness includes bits of her efforts to render Tahirih's poetry into English. She has always written poetry, and living in Peru and Chile made her very at home in the warm currents of magic realism, as reflected in her poetry book, A Woman's Moods (Are Never Done), also available at www.badipublishing.com.
She can be reached via janetruheschoen.blogspot.com
