As part of Governor Manchin's "Come Home to West Virginia" effort, our state's Wonderful West Virginia Magazine will be publishing a special "West Virginia Reunion" issue. As a West Virginia author, I was asked to share my thoughts on West Virginia and "coming home" to our beautiful state. This is what I wrote:

1. During the years we lived in Michigan, coming home to West Virginia meant singing “Oh, those hills, beautiful hills, how I love those West Virginia hills . . ." with my husband and our two children when we caught our first sight of the West Virginia hills as we were driving back home to visit my family in Weirton.

2. My favorite West Virginia reunion memory has to be plural. It is all of my high school reunions (Madonna High School, Class of 1966). As I look around at all of those faces, now beginning to grow old, I am always reminded of Willa Cather’s words of how “We possess together the precious, the incommunicable past.”

3. West Virginia’s best-kept secret is its fifty shades of springtime-green.

4. Even when I am away from West Virginia I feel its influence: The hills, the mountains -- it’s the land that always pulls me home. Of my books, my newest one, GOLDEN DELICIOUS: A CINDERELLA APPLE STORY, is an ideal “Homesick Remedy.” Why? Because it’s a fun, true story about the discovery of the Golden Delicious apple on Anderson Mullins’s Clay County farm.   Kathleen Kemly’s beautiful illustrations will make you want to sink your teeth into one of those “gorgeous, glowing, golden apples.” No wonder Golden Delicious is our state fruit! 

me at Canaan Valley

Recently I had the pleasure of doing a presentation on my new book, GOLDEN DELICIOUS: A CINDERELLA APPLE STORY at the Mary H. Weir Public Library in Weirton, WV. It was great to be back in my hometown where I also spent a day at St. Joseph the Worker Elementary School sharing my books with the students and doing a poetry workshop with the 8th Graders. The teachers went all out, wearing apple motif pins and vests, and the walls of the hallway were filled with delightful artwork done by students in response to my various books. There was even a delicious apple cake in the teacher's lounge. What a memorable school visit. Thank you St. Joe's!

The photo shows Linda Kucan, a professor in the University of Pittsburgh's School of Education, and my best friend ever since 7th Grade. (In my book NO STAR NIGHTS Linda is the "best friend on the slag hill.) In the middle, is her niece Jordan Porter who along with her brother, Tyler, helped out tremendously with book sales, and that's me on the right.