A Life Through Books

 

 

Historical Fiction | Race & Identity | Women’s Stories | 1930s America

Date Published: September 19, 2025

Publisher: MindStir Media

Pamela appears to be a privileged young white socialite, newly married and expecting her first child. But beneath the polished surface lies a restless, unsettled woman struggling against the suffocating expectations placed upon her. As her pregnancy advances, Pamela becomes fixated on one thing: finding Miss Minnie, the Black midwife who delivered her at home in 1911.

Her request ignites fierce resistance. Both families condemn the idea, and Pamela’s husband, Frank, fearing scandal and loss of control, tightens his grip—bringing in relatives to monitor her movements and even hiring surveillance to ensure she never makes contact with the midwife. Determined and increasingly reckless, Pamela secretly pressures her Black maid to help locate Miss Minnie, setting in motion a chain of events neither family can contain.

What begins as a quiet domestic drama escalates into a volatile confrontation with race, power, and truth. As long-buried histories surface, the search for a midwife becomes a catalyst for racial tension, betrayal, and violence—raising the chilling question: will this birth end in life… or murder?

Long Lost Midwife starts with measured restraint and builds relentlessly toward a tempestuous, unforgettable conclusion. It is a haunting exploration of white blindness, Black resilience, and the fragile illusions that sustain privilege in early 20th-century America.

Perfect for readers who enjoy:

● Thought-provoking historical fiction

● Novels examining race, class, and gender

● Character-driven stories set in pre-Civil Rights America

● Books that begin quietly and end with devastating force

 

About the Author

During the final ten years of a professional career, Smith moderated the Plymouth Writers Group, a MeetUp-based genre writing collective composed of engineers, doctors, legal professionals, technical writers, and MFA graduates. Within this collaborative environment, Smith completed first drafts of three novels, with two additional works developed independently.

Smith holds a degree in History from St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, an academic foundation that profoundly shapes the thematic and contextual grounding of the work. Historical setting, for Smith, is never decorative—it is the backbone of character behavior and moral conflict.

Another significant creative influence comes from many years singing in Sonomento, a Minneapolis-based operatic choir active until 2024. Immersion in opera introduced Smith to the disciplined exactness of musical phrasing and libretto, where text is fluid, expressive, and shaped by emotional register. That sense of linguistic “plasticity” carries directly into Smith’s prose style.

Long Lost Midwife reflects these influences in a novel that begins with restraint and builds toward controlled chaos—examining race, power, and identity in 1930s America with precision, tension, and historical depth.

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Date Published: December 23, 2025

Drawing on careful biblical exegesis, historical research, and engagement with contemporary scholarship, it seeks to equip readers to recognize the patterns of God's dealings with His people, discern the times without sensationalism, and anchor their hope where Scripture does: in the faithfulness of the One who calls Himself "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."

By the end, readers will better understand where we are in the story of redemption—and what it means to live as children of the promise in an age of upheaval.

A seventh generation Californian, she descends from a family with more than 420 years on American soil, beginning with early arrivals to Massachusetts in the early 1600s. From the Mayflower through the Revolutionary, Civil, and World Wars, her ancestors fought for freedom, trekking across the continent over generations of Manifest Destiny to the final frontier—California in the 1800s.

Her great grandfathers helped shape the Los Angeles basin in the early 1900s as it grew from a town of a few thousand into a major metropolis. One founded an early auto parts enterprise that later folded into what became the NAPA Auto Parts distribution system, and was a 33rd degree Freemason and 32nd degree Scottish Rite Mason; the other built many of the public schools of Long Beach—campuses she would encounter again a century later when her own career in school business leadership ended amid the battle over their reconstruction.

That civic legacy extended through her grandfathers and close kin. One grandfather served in the U.S. Navy and spent three decades as an engineer in Lockheed’s Skunk Works, contributing to the secretive aerospace projects that defined the Cold War era. Another served in the Navy in the Second World War and later became a Superior Court judge for Island and San Juan Counties in Washington State. A maternal uncle spent ten years in the U.S. Coast Guard before rising to vice president of foreign research and development for Occidental Petroleum, and a maternal aunt served for twenty seven years as director of research within the orbit of the United Nations and the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Her father developed historic ranches in California and Nevada and worked in Republican politics alongside Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon, later authoring two books about his time with Reagan. Until his death in 2024, he remained active in local affairs, modeling a life of engagement at the intersection of land, liberty, and public service.

It is against this backdrop of faith, sacrifice, and civic engagement that she writes today. Politics, corporate development, international organizations, Freemasonry, law, the military and its industrial complex, history, land use development, and construction all appear in her extended family story, providing a living case study of the very systems traced in this book. These ancestral strands—crossing boardrooms, bases, courtrooms, campuses, and covenants—form the soil from which her understanding of global forces has grown, and the lens through which she explores genealogy, power, and promise in The Eternal Flame and the Children of the Promise.

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Travel

Date Published: 12-04-2025

• What a luxury travel advisor actually does and why it is more personal than a booking site.

• How concierge-level planning saves time, reduces stress, and often costs less than do-it-yourself travel.

• The real truth about travel costs, hidden perks, and industry myths that keep travelers from better experiences.

• Essential insights on group travel, insurance, money management, and safety abroad.

• How to plan with purpose and design an itinerary that feels effortless, intentional, and memorable.

Raymond Giles is a married father of three based in Texas, a proud U.S. Navy veteran, and a nuclear trained submariner.

After serving aboard fast-attack submarines as a machinist's mate, he earned his Bachelor of Applied Science and Technology in Nuclear Engineering Technology from Thomas Edison State University.

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Date Published: October 21, 2025

If you ask 100 readers what this story is about, you may receive 100 different answers—and that is exactly the point.

My Guardian Angel is a deeply moving short story about true love in its many forms, inspired by real life, real relationships, and real emotions. At its core, this story is a tribute to unwavering devotion between a husband and wife—and to the quiet strength that sustains us when life hangs in the balance.

Graham, a Vietnam veteran whose greatest joys are his wife and their beloved dogs, begins what seems like an ordinary day wrapped in comfort and routine. But in a sudden and devastating turn, he finds himself fighting for his life. As danger closes in, it is his wife—his lifelong “Guardian Angel”—who stands between him and the unthinkable.

Set largely within the stark stillness of a hospital, the story unfolds as friends rally, time seems to pause, and love becomes both shield and salvation. Through moments of fear, hope, memory, and faith, My Guardian Angel explores how love endures even when life is fragile—and how the bonds we build may be stronger than fate itself.

Though classified as fiction, more than 60% of this story is drawn directly from the author’s life and experiences. Every word comes from the heart—there is no AI-generated content, no shock value, and no explicit language. This is a story written for readers of all ages who believe in love, kindness, and the quiet courage found in everyday relationships.

✨ Themes Readers Will Connect With:

● Hope in the face of mortality

● Gratitude, humility, and resilience

● Faith, belief, and emotional connection

● Stories that inspire children and adults alike

 

My Guardian Angel does not tell readers what true love is—it invites them to discover what it means through the lens of their own lives.

If you are looking for a heartfelt, gentle, and profoundly human story—one that lingers long after the final page—this book offers a reminder that love, in all its forms, is life’s greatest gift.

Adam Chase – Author | Vietnam Veteran | Storyteller of Hope and Love

Adam Chase is a Vietnam veteran, lifelong entrepreneur, and late-in-life fiction writer whose stories are rooted in lived experience, gratitude, and enduring love. At 79 years old, Adam brings a lifetime of resilience, humility, and heart to his writing—qualities shaped by military service, decades as a self-employed corporate consultant, and his journey as a business owner and mentor.

In 2016, Adam and his wife purchased a failing plumbing company despite having no prior plumbing experience. Through discipline, integrity, and a tireless work ethic forged during his Vietnam service, they transformed the business into the number-one contractor in their county. In January 2025, they sold the company to two trusted key employees—continuing to work alongside them, unpaid, ensuring the next generation’s success. Adam is widely regarded as the county’s “go-to” backflow tester and is respected for consistently placing recognition on his team rather than himself.

For over thirty years, Adam worked as a self-employed corporate consultant, a career that allowed him and his wife to travel the world. One of his most unforgettable experiences was visiting the only wild panda sanctuary in the Southern Mountains of China, where he held a mother panda and her cub—an encounter that deepened his appreciation for life, connection, and wonder.

Later in life, Adam faced significant health challenges, including skin cancer, macular degeneration with geographic atrophy, and ocular rosacea. Rather than slowing him down, these challenges fuel his determination to remain mentally and physically engaged each day. His writing emerged not from literary ambition, but from a desire to put feelings, memories, and gratitude into words—especially for children, who he believes need hope, belief, and kindness most.

Adam writes children’s bedtime stories and fiction, including the deeply personal short story My Guardian Angel, which—while categorized as fiction—is largely inspired by his real life, his marriage, and the people he loves most. Despite graduating near the bottom of a class of over 1,000 students and reading almost exclusively non-fiction and business books, Adam’s storytelling resonates because it is honest, heartfelt, and unfiltered.

He does not consider himself an author by profession, but a man sharing his thoughts and feelings with sincerity. Adam credits his single greatest achievement in life as marrying “the woman of his dreams”—the inspiration behind My Guardian Angel. His stories contain no profanity, no adult content, and no artificial intelligence—only his words, his heart, and his lived truth.

 

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Contemporary Fiction

Date Published: January 15, 2026

Publisher: Windy Ridge Publishing

Her daughters—Kay, a celebrated mezzo-soprano, and Anna, a self-doubting composer—must confront the emotional fallout of their mother’s long-buried lies. Alongside them are a young, truth-seeking journalist, a lawyer, and a priest, all carrying the weight of secrets they are professionally and morally bound to keep.

Set in the haunting beauty of Minnesota’s river bluffs and Lake Superior’s North Shore, this is a story of legacy and redemption—of truth breaking through the cracks of deception and healing in the wake of generations of silence.

About the Author

 

 Ron Elcombe is a professor emeritus at Winona State University (MN), where he taught various advertising and mass communication courses for 25 years. His eclectic career encompasses teaching instrumental music, as well as sales and marketing roles for multiple companies. He has been published in the Lake Country Journal and several professional academic journals and has attended seminars on fiction writing at the Iowa Summer Writers Festival. "The Legacy of a Lie" is the first book in a three-novel series. He resides in Rochester, Minnesota, with his wife, Sharon, and enjoys summers on the golf course and at the family cabin in northern Minnesota.

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BookBaby

Date Published: 08-16-2025

Publisher: Solander Press

One afternoon, A.J. returned home from school to find a surprise waiting for him in the barn - a beautiful little horse named Lady Star. She was now his to ride and care for. From that day on, A.J. spent all his free time learning how to ride Lady Star and caring for her. He dreamed of being skilled enough to ride alongside his grandfather, father, and Jon, the farm hand, during the cattle roundups.

Award-winning author Sherry Roberts weaves a heartfelt story about growing up in the 1930s and 1940s. Based on the tales passed down by her father, Just Call Me Pardner is a must-read for history lovers and those who enjoy stories of the American West. 

Excerpt

“Hey, Grandpa. I got the stall cleaned out. Is it time?”

“Follow me.” Grandpa says as he goes to the corral. There stands Lady Star with Jon. Already saddled up and ready for a ride.

“You have to listen to everything Jon tells you.”

“Yes, sir,” I tell Grandpa as I climb up the corral railing. “Hi, Jon.”

“Hi, pardner. Are you ready to ride?” Jon is smiling as big as me.

Leaning over the rail, I pat Lady Star on the neck. Lady Star is brown with white marks all over. Right above her eyes there’s a white mark like a star. The mark must be how she got her name.

“Okay. Lady Star is a really gentle horse and will give you a good ride. Be nice to her, and she’ll be nice to you, too.” Dad comes to stand beside me at the corral rails.

“I wish I had a new cowboy hat. My old one barely fits.”

“Well, you’ll have to wear the old one for now when you ride your horse. You decide.” Dad says as he leans over the railing.

I push my old hat tight on my head. Grandpa grins and gives Dad that look. You know the one. When an adult thinks they’re right and you have to agree.

I head to where Jon holds Lady Star close to the fence. He tells me how to mount Lady Star from the fence. Jon told me we’d work on how to get on her from the ground another day. Then I’ll be like a real cowboy. “Cowboys learn this way all the time. Especially when they’re young.” Jon gives my knee a tap.

 

About the Author

As a former middle school teacher, Dr. Roberts decided to write her first middle-grade novel (ages 8-13). Her debut novel, The Galaxy According to CeCe, is the first book in a three-book series. It was officially released on February 24, 2024. Book two, The Galaxy According to Cece: The Mysterious Dr. Pruitt, was released August 2024. Book three, The Galaxy According to Cece: The Stars Align, released February 2025.

Sherry’s next venture is a chapter book series (ages 6-8). The first book, Just Call Me Pardner, was released August 1, 2025. The series is about a young boy in the 1930s on a small farm in Northeastern Oklahoma and is inspired by stories of her father’s childhood in the 1930s. Book 2, Just Look at Those Boots, launches in early 2026, with Book 3, Just Don’t Give a Girl a Frog, launching in November 2026.

Dr. Roberts has also written many articles that appear in various academic journals, along with three textbooks. Personal Financial Literacy is in its fourth edition (Pearson). She is an associate professor of Marketing in Jones College of Business at Middle Tennessee State University.

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Young Adult

Date Published: April 10th 2026

Publisher: Acorn Publishing

To Die For is a harrowing look into the life of a narcissist who refuses to take accountability for the damage she inflicts. 

 
        “Why are you always spoiling things? Why couldn’t you have just believed me?” 
        Then the girl charged toward her, rage in her eyes. Marion had seen this before – it was the bully on the playground, the mean girl at the gym – why are you making me do this??
        And suddenly Marion knew that she was fighting for her life. Swinging the flashlight she connected it with Dei’s upper arm, unbalancing her, if only for a moment. As Dei staggered back, Marion glanced at the front door and knew that she would never make it in time. Instead, she headed for the balcony and tugged the glass door open with all her might. At once, the rain whipped against her face, stinging like shards of glass, but she knew that Dei could feel it too.
        And then she began to scream. After all, they were only one floor up from the boardwalk. Surely someone would see them struggling!
        But there was no one there. It was as if Naples had become a ghost town. There was nothing but abandoned cars and boarded up windows – and rising water.
        A tiny, claw-like hand grabbed at her arm and twisted, but she wrenched free. With Marion’s clothing soaked, it was harder for Dei to hold onto her, but she stepped all the way out onto the concrete patio, now slick with rain.
        “You bitch!”
        Marion heard Dei scream behind her and turned to face her abuser but before she could raise the heavy flashlight again, it slipped from her wet grip and clattered to the floor.
        Seeing it fall, Dei kicked the flashlight under one of the chairs and then lunged at Marion.  Grabbing her by the hair she was surprised to feel the old woman fighting back. They were both soaked, their bodies slick with rain and debris carried in by the fierce wind.
Suddenly one of the chairs slammed into Dei, hitting her back legs, and she lost her hold on Marion. As Dei staggered back, Marion moved toward the door, intending to lock her out, but Dei caught her by the wrist.
        “No, you don’t!” she said fiercely, propelling Marion towards the rail of the balcony.  For one terrifying moment, Marion feared that she would lose her balance and pitch forward over the ledge to the street below. Instead, her core held -- and years of yoga and gardening paid off in that moment, saving her life.
        Pushing herself away from the railing, Marion saw Dei rushing toward her like a linebacker. She had youth and energy and agility, but Marion had one thing Dei didn’t have in that moment – her wits.
        As Dei charged towards the railing, Marion waited until the last millisecond and then stepped aside - the impact to Dei enough to knock the wind out of her. Falling to her knees, she was now doubled over beside Marion, if only for a moment.
        But that moment was all that it took for Marion to see the iPhone sticking out of the pocket of Dei’s jeans. Adrenaline surged through Marion as her right hand connected with the phone, and in one sweeping movement, she took it and flung it over the balcony to the flooded street below.