Jasmyn is horrified when her single mother is called up from the army reserves to go to Saudi Arabia at the start of the Persian Gulf War. Her mother is gone two days later, leaving Jasmyn with Jake, her mother’s boyfriend and the father of her baby half brother. Suddenly Jas finds herself in charge of running the house and caring for the baby. Now there’s no time for practice with her school basketball team. Jas can’t understand why her mother has a job that forces her to leave her children. If only Jake were a more responsible adult. Feeling abandoned and overwhelmed, Jas wonders how much longer this can go on.
I had an unusually healthy childhood-sailing across the ocean on a steamship at age 7, visiting England,Scotland, and Norway, and playing endlessly with my dollhouse, which perhaps eventually lead to writing many books for children. Because I live in a refugee resettlement city Portland, ME, I wrote about displaced kids from war areas, Sudan, Kurdistan, and Kosovo. I was also an art teacher. The book, Soldier Mom, now 20 years old, was written during the first Gulf War, when we suddenly used a "reserve" army instead of an enlisted one. I had two active sons, dogs, rabbit, chameleon, hamster and later assisted 40 Kosova high school students. I loved gardening, painting, reading. But suddenly began to hurt everywhere, falling, weak. Nothing helped.I had to leave my job as an art teacher but was still able to write.
Nearly twenty years (plus a bout with severe cancer) into feeling weak, I now know I have Myasthenia Gravis, a neuromuscular disease that affects your eyes, breathing, endurance and speech.
I still write, paint, sing, practice my standup comedy, and take photographs. Really nothing inside me has changed at all. I fight to improve, laugh over the silliness of ordinary life, and am curious about all sorts of things.
