Jessa is Back

Viewed through the eyes of a young white girl, segregation was ubiquitous and unquestioned, but once Jessa’s experience with the Oregon integrated school system allows her to become friends with a Negro girl, she realizes that segregation is “just plain stupid.”  Jessa wants her town to provide music instruction not only for the white kids, but for the overlooked colored kids, too.  While she becomes a gadfly to the school board, her interactions with other members of her town precipitate crises that uncover support for her position as well as staunch opposition.  In the end, Jessa fights for interracial friendships, and the people of the fictional Town of Radford cannot help but respond to her message.  This is a story that reverberates powerfully into our present.

I never considered writing as a career choice when I was growing up in Tennessee – our home was full of books, pictures, poetry and music, and I was regularly read to (my favorite was Winnie the Pooh).  Early on, I was swept away by the natural world and knew I wanted to be a biologist.  I so loved the trees and flowers and all the little creatures!  My husband David and I met at a marine lab, and our similar interests led us to doctorate and subsequent postdoctoral training that prepared us for research and teaching positions in the Pacific Northwest. 

The South and the Pacific Northwest are my two realms.  In the Pacific Northwest, we live a nearly self-sufficient life with our animals and plantings in a wild canyon of the Snake River.  But living in the Northwest gave me the time and clarity to look back into the world of my childhood.  Much of what I recall is gone forever, but current events forced me to confront parallels with the white supremacy of the 1950s and convinced me that I had to write.  It began as a daydream story that showed me that plot – that elusive element – flowed naturally, drawn along by the characters who crowded in to people my story.  These stories are wholly fiction, and at the same time, woven from my life’s experiences and love of the South and its people.