May 2026 Special Announcement
Changes are coming with my new book in progress.
Let me tell you a bit about it.
Call of the Heart
~ A Rescue Dog's Dream ~
GINGER was the remarkable dog Barbara and her husband, Harry, rescued in the woods of Missouri in the seventies after she’d been abandoned by her owner. This book is a sequel to Barbara’s first memoir, The Drummer Drives, Everybody Else Rides, and it is both a memoir and her first work of fiction based on a true story. Covering 13 years in the lives of the Brabecs, it tells the dog’s true and dramatic life story in first person in alternating chapters from two points of view: Barbara's and Ginger's, and her chapter, “Trying to Survive,” opens the book.
This story revolves around Ginger’s life story and how we trained her to communicate with us. But the book has other storylines as well. The 13 years covered in this book happen to include the years Harry and I traveled abroad, how he lost the ability to support us as a musician, and began to explore other income avenues. It also tells the story of how I became a professional writer and author and eventually the family breadwinner. It’s about a marriage turned upside down before a new balance was found, and it's also about how Ginger was often the glue that held Harry and me together when times were rough.
One unusual fact documented in this book is that in 1976, to wind down five years of the magazine Harry and I published in the early seventies, I closed out with three issues of an award-winning series titled Craftspirit 76—A Special Salute to the American Revolution Bicentennial Celebration. How coincidental, I thought, that my new book will be published 50 years later during America's 250th birthday celebration.
Thanks for staying with me as I complete the book that means so much to me. I’ll be back in June with an update, along with a behind-the-scenes look at the two book strategists who are helping me bring new visibility to my earlier memoirs and introducing this new book to a wider audience of readers.
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