Inspired So Many

First of all, I am so proud to have a fellow Hoosier write and make such a mark on the heart of all who read your Shiloh books. I know that your books have opened hearts, young and old, to the idea that we need to care for, and have compassion, for other living things.

I once volunteered a local animal shelter in Hamilton County in Indiana. I asked a worker what inspired her to go into animal rescue, and she said that it was when she read Shiloh in grade school. As a teacher, I became very interested in your book, and as I read it, I felt every one of your words in my heart!

I want you to know that the last who was so inspired by Shiloh did not appear to be well, and yet your book meant so much to her. I hope that you are proud of how your work put such an impression in the heart of someone who probably struggled with school.

I am now retired after teaching in Noblesville Schools. I am thinking about leading an online book club that features books on animal care and rescue. Your will definitely be one of those books!

I know that your book mentions poverty in a very sensitive, caring way. I want to make sure that the setting of your book is in the Depression Era. My grandmother grew up in rural Indiana during those times, and so many things you write about resonate with what she told me. I don’t want to misinform my students.

Thanks so much!

I’m not sure I had any particular era in mind.  I grew up during the Depression, so I’m sure that those years influenced me, though my parents still read to us aloud for a long time each night, and that was the best part for me.  Marty’s grandmother is in a nursing home and has dementia, as becomes more clear in the other three Shiloh books, and Marty’s parents have to pay for her care.  So even though his dad is a mailman, they live in a very small four-room house, and Marty longs for a room of his own, as you’ll read about later (just as I longed for a room, but didn’t get one until we moved again and I was starting 8th grade in Illiniois).  So adding a dog to the household is just not something Marty’s Dad will accept, and of course, Shiloh legally belongs to Judd at the start of the story.