Floyd Vernon Chandler

Floyd Vernon Chandler’s new book of poetry, Praying in the Zone, has just been published. You can find it on amazon.com and amazon.de. Vernon is an EUU member-at-large and a retired Army chaplain and Universalist minister.

John Eichrodt has written: This collection of poems should be received as a spiritual gift because they will help bring readers into connection with the eternal spirit of life. Throughout our lives, we seek this precious divine connection. Sometimes it is present, sometimes ephemeral. This connection is present in every poem. The poems, taken together, manage to bring the meaning and purpose of our living, our very existence, into spiritual focus. Written with such beauty and with such elegant simplicity, they will be universally accessible to anyone questing for the eternal spirit of life.

Nancy Blodgett Klein

Nancy’s first novel Torn Between Worlds: A Mexican Immigrant’s Journey to Find Herself is the story of Isabel, a 12-year-old Mexican girl, who struggles as she tries to settle into a new life in the United States. She misses her mother, left behind when she and her father came to find a better life. She doesn’t feel welcome living with her uncle and his family and struggles with the English language. How will she cope in this strange new world?

Her kind sixth-grade teacher suggests Isabel keep a journal, where she can pour out the feelings she used to share with her mother. She encourages her to take home the newspaper to help improve her English and learn about world events. While Isabel starts to make friends, she is horrified by the events that take place on September 11, 2001 in the US, witnesses a deadly political demonstration in Oaxaca, Mexico and is eventually forced to flee to Madrid, Spain.

Will all this chaos prevent Isabel from finding a way to feel connected to the world around her? This coming-of-age story is written in journal format, spanning three years and three countries. Follow Isabel as she grows into a young woman during turbulent times, trying to find a place to call home instead of feeling torn between worlds.

 

Nancy’s most recent book, Growing a Top-Notch Family Tree: With Stories from its Branches, is non-fiction, giving advice to genealogists about steps to take to grow a great family tree online, with details about what to do and what to avoid to have the best possible tree for current family, future generations and the wider community to enjoy. It includes details about three online sites, Ancestry, FamilySearch and MyHeritage. It also discusses the importance of DNA testing and DNA matching with relatives to help you verify your findings.

The second half shares stories about family tree members, including famous ones like Mayflower passenger Stephen Hopkins, colorful characters from the Stewart/Stuart family of Scotland, and “troublesome” women relatives like Elizabeth Woodville of England, Elizabeth Hutchinson, from Massachusetts, and fancy dresser Thomasine Boyes, a British immigrant to Massachusetts and wife of Rev. Francis Johnson, a popular Puritan minister. Stories are told about great-grandfather Hall Deland, a key figure in the Underground Railroad in Michigan, along with a great-grandfather who got rich buying slaves and working them on his Louisiana plantation. Some stories are funny, such as one about a relative’s embarrassing encounter with Puritan ethics, while others are quite sad, such as the chapter about six generations of sad endings among Zealand relatives.

This book is designed to be both educational and entertaining for anyone interested in genealogy, be they new to the subject or an experienced master.

Like Vernon, Nancy is an EUU member-at-large. Her books are available on Amazon, including as a Kindle versions.