Woman of Independence is the story of Abigail Adams, the second ever First Lady of the United States. Using Adams' letters to speak for her, this book paints a vivid picture of the daily life of women and gives an eye-witness account, from a female perspective, of the birth of our country.
I grew up in New England and loved the history all around me there. Then I went off to college in Washington, DC, where I met my husband, an actual native Washingtonian, who loved history but from a whole other period of time. Here was my soul mate, and so it has proven for 41 years, three children and five grandchildren--we still regularly head off to somewhere new to learn something new from history, even heading to the tip of Newfoundland this fall to visit L'Anse aux Meadows and walk where the Vikings walked.
As a writer, I consider myself to be mostly a "teller of stories" and I find the true stories from the adventure of history to be the ones I most enjoy telling. I have always been a reader of history. I especially loved to read biographies during my childhood. As an adult, I began reading more of the actual primary source material of history--diaries and letters and reminiscences by people who were actually involved in an historical event. The stories I found in this reading, especially the ones from the Civil War and Revolutionary War were fascinating and much too interesting to be left to just adult readers. So I became a writer of history, in addition to being a reader of it. All I try to do is to take my favorite stories from history and share them with younger readers, using the words of the people who were really there as much as possible. Over the years I have expanded the history I enjoy to some parts of European history especially anything to do with the Romans, and anything from the Medieval and Renaissance periods.
However, as the years have passed, I find that all that I have learned and then shared with my readers stays with me and makes me only want to write more. This time I want to be able to speculate of what these real people were really thinking, and that means writing fiction. My writing will still be full of history--I couldn't get away from that if I tried! But now I'll have room to close my eyes and pretend that I am there back in the past, part of all that real history I still love!
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