The Women of Magnolia (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781505879063)

Originally from St. Louis, Marlene now calls Louisville, Kentucky home. A wife, mother and grandmother, Marlene has a wide range of interests including wildlife rehabilitation and painting. To quote Marlene, "It took me a long time to start writing, but now I never want to stop. The stories just keep on coming. I love to create characters that come alive on the page and stay with you long after you finish the book." It was the tail end of the Great Depression when my mother began having babies. She had five children in five years and five years later, I was born. We were poor ragtag kids who had no idea about television, telephones or inside plumbing. All we had was a radio that picked up two stations. Most of the houses we lived in should have had a sign on the front door that said, "Condemned." We moved around a lot. My father enjoyed his creature comforts, which in his case were women and booze, while we stayed home with mom. We froze in the winter, burned up in the summer, ate lots of fatty meat fried in lard and walked a long way to school every day. We got one pair of shoes each year. They were brown leather, always a size too big so they would last until summer and you could go barefoot. We played outside until dark, wore plastic bags on over our shoes in the snow, and in the summer we swam in the Mississippi River. Cuts, scrapes and bruises from tin cans and glass were treated with Mercurochrome and a pat on the head. We had measles, mumps, whooping cough and chicken pox--and we survived it all. To this day, my imagination is my best friend and creativity is my constant source of inspiration.