{"product_id":"9781483583860","title":"Hitch Your Wagon to a Star","description":"I am an aspiring first-time writer, a retired educator who taught children to read and encouraged them to write for over 35  years.  As Jacqueline Kennedy stated,  “There are many little ways to enlarge your child’s world.   Love of books is the best of all.”    As a child, my fondest memories involved reading books  and sharing them with my closest friends; I am addicted  to literature!  Therefore, upon retirement, I decided to  embark on a  journey to uncover the realities that made  my mother who she was.  It has been a   fascinating voyage,  and I am more knowledgeable about the history of the  twentieth century now than I was during all those years in the classroom.    My mother is not famous, at least not in the usual sense.   Instead, she made inroads for other women, including  her three daughters, which resonate to this day as trailblazers.   The history surrounding her life is filled with incredible  victories on a global scale as well as simply personally.   Women were not appreciated as intelligent, able-bodied and  purposeful beings except (sometimes!) in the privacy of their  homes.  Mother knew life for women had to change, and  she internalized proclamations from early feminists such  as Margaret Sanger who said, “Woman must not accept; she  must challenge.  She must not be awed by that which has been built up  around her; she must reverence that woman in her which  struggles for expression.”  My manuscript, Hitch Your Wagon to a Star, chronicles a  woman’s life from the poverty of the 1920’s through the  years of the Oil Boom, the Great Depression, and an  amazing  emergence from those years based on the economy’s reaction to World War II.  It continues into the Post War years of the  “Red Scare” and the Baby Boom and culminates with  a personal change that engenders a new focus and a second  chance at life.   Because my book is historically true and based on research, I  am calling it a biographical  novel. Names were not changed and are real.  The heart of my book is the truth that  possibilities exist and can become realities for those who are  sufficiently determined and is based on conquering difficulties  in the face of a daunting list of stumbling blocks.  For the  protagonist, her successes gave rise to what Henri Frederic  Amiel described when he said, “Conquering any difficulty  always gives a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding  to one’s liberty.\"","brand":"BookBaby","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47130132250864,"sku":"9781483583860","price":6.49,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781483583860_p0.jpg?v=1763630961","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781483583860","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}