I’m working on a new novel… actually an old novel… but a story I’m rewriting for publication. This book won honorable mention in a California Writers Club contest, landed me my first literary agent, and got me a movie option in the 1990s. I still think this story would make a great film.

I first wrote Leaving Lonesome when I was a young military wife with a husband helicopter pilot. Scott flew with a lot of Vietnam vets. The top photo is Scott in a helicopter twenty years ago. The baby-faced crew chief on Scott’s left is Jeff Ratkovich. Funny and humble, he used to tell girls he sold jewelry on the pier. He’s a pilot now. The guy on the far right, Chief Warrant Officer Holcomb was a Vietnam vet. A big teddy bear of a man, I remember his robust laughter and life advice. He seemed old because we were young. Vietnam fascinated me back then and I was always asking the vets to share their stories with me. CWO Holcomb was one of my favorite pilots.

Last week I was blessed to do some brainstorming with my father-in-law, also a Vietnam vet and retired army Colonel Rick Fields. He entered the war as a 19-year-old door gunner, got a battlefield commission for saving a colonel’s life after their helicopter was shot down and ended up being put through college and flight school by the US Army. He then returned to Vietnam for another tour as a helicopter pilot.

It was such a joy to have Colonel Opa and his wife Grandma Marty here spoiling the kids and Scott and me too. Hearing the Colonel’s war stories made me laugh, cry, and take lots of notes. We worked out a war scene I can’t wait to share with you. It involves a spider monkey, Kool-Aid, and a helicopter crash. The monkey and Kool-Aid really happened and our amazing Colonel Opa survived a number of helicopter crashes in Vietnam. I couldn’t have a better advisor for this book.

I really enjoyed my writers’ retreat in Tucson a few weeks ago but was so happy to get home to my pack that never stops eating, playing, and producing laundry for me. The boys were happy to see me too.

So without further rambling, here is the back cover copy for my new novel. Please pray I can get it finished and sent onto my editor in January. Hope you like the sound of this story…

A family torn apart by war. A love affair that reaches to the sky. And a secret with the power to redeem or destroy them…

Sutter County, California 1972

John Reno returns from Vietnam a disgraced army helicopter pilot wracked by guilt and grief. Homeless and alone he makes his way from one crop-dusting job to the next until he reaches the woman who can grant him redemption or insure his damnation.

Swampy Callohan is a young widow barely holding on to her crop-dusting company. She flies her trusty old Stearmans from dawn until dusk, desperate to make it in a man’s world of faster, more efficient ag cat planes, but time, technology, and a family on the brink threaten to destroy her.

When John Reno—the best pilot she’s ever seen— arrives one fateful afternoon, she believes Callohan Dusters can be saved. And maybe her heart will be reborn as well. Reno becomes her saving grace until the day she discovers he harbors a secret that just might shatter her whole world.