Dana opened her home and hosted along with Renee, Danielle and Jessica. We had the honor of being revisited by Mary Jumbelic on Thursday to discuss her second book, “Speak Her Name.” Mary is writing a third book with the focus on situations where there are multiple deaths in a scene or mass casualties and a focus on PTSD. She said her focus is speaking for the dead but perhaps she is also connecting the living to the process of discovering how a person has died. She’s educating us and it’s a gift.

Marcia, Nagulinie, Rachael and Cynthia hosted a lovely kick off meeting complete with delicious food and drinks. We discussed and were treated to a talk with our author, Marilyn Higgins, for her book “Dreams of Freedom.” Those of us not from the area got a big dose of important history education of the Central New York area. The author covered many historically important events for the time period of 1845 – 1865 in this historical fiction novel and much of the writing felt very factual. It was a wonderful experience to hear of her journey and her writing process and to learn of all the opportunities we have to visit local historically important landmarks and museums.