An Inspector Banks mystery.

Wednesday's Child is the winner of the Maine Chapbook Award. It is in its fourth printing. It is taught in many university courses. This is a book about a female growing up, living in, trying to leave her cultural self behind, and then returning to the Franco-American cultural group which exists in the Northeast, and more specifically in Waterville, Maine. The book addresses what has been asked of me to be present to this cultural group of people. As a girl/woman who or how have I been asked to be? What has been asked of me? The book is written from the perspective of a contemporary woman who is also a historical person. The book is also as much about the conditions in which the Franco-American group exists as well as the writing about what it means to be Franco-American and female. This is a book about how we are our historical self while we are in the present. I am more of my past--than I am of the present moment--when it is in the present moment that I now exist. What is, or is not, reflected in my reality and the reality of other Franco-Americans? This book is about the female self and her formation through the many individuals and institutions around her. Through story and cultural filters, the book illustrates family, friends, religion, health, alcoholism, superstitions, art & craft, beliefs, values, song, recipe, story, coming-of-age, generations, motherhood, language, bilingualism, denials, sexuality and what constitutes a cultural individual in a society that will not always allow that person full access or realization to who she is. But she does it anyway.

In three amazing stories childcare worker Shane Dunphy reveals a world of hidden heartbreak and survival against the odds. When Shane meets her, Gillian is starving herself to death and in thrall to a mother more interested in abusing and manipulating her daughter than cherishing and protecting her. Though he tries to help, it seems Shane is just another adult destined to fail Gillian ... For the daughter of disturbed violent parents, Connie is an amazingly well-adjusted A-grade student. But when Shane finally gets behind the facade, he unearths a shattering truth behind her apparent normality ... Cordelia, Victor and Ibar are three loving siblings left with a hopelessly alcoholic neglectful father. It�s a race against time to see if their father can ever become the kind of Dad he wants to be, or if they are destined to be split up and sucked into the childcare merry-go-round �

As many as one in four women have suffered severe neglect or abuse in childhood. This doubles the likelihood of their suffering clinical depression in adult life. Based on twenty years of systematic research,Wednesday's Child examines why neglect and abuse occur and demonstrates how such negative experience in childhood often results in abusive adult relationships, low self-esteem and depression. Drawing on interviews with over 200 women, the authors show vividly what can be learned from the experience of adult survivors of abuse. Most importantly, Wednesday's Child assesses the factors which can reduce the later impact of such experience on both the children of today and the parents of tomorrow.

For Gemma Alcott, daughter of business tycoon Burgess T. Alcott, III, the summer of 1929 is a season for picnics, sailing parties, and romance. But life becomes difficult when the Alcott wealth is lost in the Wall Street crash known as Black Tuesday. Gemma and her younger sister, Melody, are suddenly destitute. In their time of need, Kace Morgan, a distant relative appears and Gemma realizes she still has choices. But can she handle the loss of all she has known and a new life that is far from the sheltering wealth she has grown up with? Wednesday's child might have woe, but life is never so dark that God cannot deliver His own into paths of light. Book 3 in the series.

When one places 'Wednesday's Child' under the microscope it plainly reveals that Marcus Green was failing in the American way of life during the early 1970's, and chose to leave the Country of his birth , rather than to continue dwelling in the land which had brought about the demise of the three young black men whom he had known since childhood. Each of them had been drawn into the world of drugs and supposedly easy money , only to discover that all that really awaited them was an early ticket to the graveyard. Marcus choosing to span an ocean could not know what awaited him on the other side of that great expanse of water. Suddenly thrust into a culture as different as chalk is to cheese he had to adapt or perish. In a world where money, education, and social connections are enabled to bring even the most naive person safe harbor and protection, Marcus was bereft in every area. He truly became a child of providence and one dependent on the wind blowing in the right direction. This is as much about the sometimes invisible goodness of God, as it is about the visible kindness and open generosity of the elderly German woman who received him into her home, without an ulterior motive. Further to this tale of wonderment, it is also about innocent love, and how such love can be found with those outside of ones league, or realm of understanding, causing Marcus to challenge his personal strengths and weaknesses with a woman of unusual power, virtually on a daily basis. Also an underlying story of the sophisticated and worldly African American society living in Great Britain during the nineteen seventies, and how Marcus had to strap himself in for the jet set ride of his young life, which he had unexpectedly stumbled upon. Finally losing at love, yet gaining in prosperity and notoriety he is forced to return to the United States, ostensibly to bask in the limelight, but really to meet the true love of his life, and his real destiny as a human being.

As many as one in four women have suffered severe neglect or abuse in childhood. This doubles the likelihood of their suffering clinical depression in adult life. Based on twenty years of systematic research,Wednesday's Child examines why neglect and abuse occur and demonstrates how such negative experience in childhood often results in abusive adult relationships, low self-esteem and depression. Drawing on interviews with over 200 women, the authors show vividly what can be learned from the experience of adult survivors of abuse. Most importantly, Wednesday's Child assesses the factors which can reduce the later impact of such experience on both the children of today and the parents of tomorrow.