The House of Expectations
Description
Four siblings from a pioneer Methodist family come of age on a college campus during the Great Depression. After graduating, the two sisters move into their lives as teacher and librarian. Meanwhile, the two brothers return home to the Panhandle of Idaho to mining jobs and the struggle to manifest their dreams of becoming a newspaper editor and a bush pilot. Then World War II intervenes, precipitating marriages and moral shifts that fly in the face of the social and religious expectations of their parents and their matriarchal grandmother. Based loosely on the lives of my mother and three of her siblings, writing this novel has been a wonderful adventure.
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Person
I began writing in 2002 with a memoir that was a finalist for the prestigious Oregon Book Award. Since then I've been writing most days in the morning for an hour or so and am currently working on book #10. It's just so fun. I'm a big reader of mysteries and thrillers and have written three of my own. I also enjoy exploring the relationships between men and women, and mothers and daughters.
I'm a former college professor of literature and writing who's been a freelance editor for the last 25 years. I am also a pastel and acrylic painter and I make art deco needlepoint pillows (www.jillkellycreative.com). I live in Portland, Oregon, with my four cats who do all the chores so I can be creative 24/7.
