North and South Korea

Well, it appears that North Korea is rattling their sabres again. And I find it difficult to even think of a North and a South Korea, because when my dad was stationed there, in Seoul, the nation was just Korea. Period. Of course, the 38th parallel divided the Russian Zone from the American Zone, and thus we did refer to North Korea in that aspect.
Our electricity was controlled by the Russians in North Korea, meaning north from the 38th Parallel.
And they seemed to delight in cutting off our electricity at any time of day or night. I would be doing my 4th grade homework and the electricity would go off. No excuse for not doing my homework, though. We were issued Coleman lanterns, and like Abe Lincoln, I did my homework by the light from a lantern.
People ask me if I was deprived in my upbringing. Absolutely not. My parents had told me I was living a very unusual life, being in different countries, states and counties, from one year to another. I never felt that things like having no running water was anything but the way we lived without it. Our houseboy went to the water truck with jerry cans and filled them up, running back to the house to fetch another can and do the same thing. My mother coped with cooking on a wood burning stove. She had been raised in far West Texas during a time when using wood burning stoves was standard.
So when I wrote The Women of Camp Sobingo, I was careful to make the scenes as authentic as possible for that period of time, in a foreign country. I also mention the fact that fresh meat was a sometime thing, usually when fresh Kobe beef was "airlifted" from Japan. And my father went pheasant hunting. We ate fried pheasant, boiled pheasant, pheasant fricassee, and pheasant soup. All of this while carefully avoiding the buckshot that lingered after a thorough cleaning.
Ah, those were the days......funny to be nostalgic for a place after so many years. I don't think I want to go back and visit there so much as I sometimes wish I still had my wanderlust satisfied. Today, though, Korea would be vastly different, and thus "the old days" would be but a distant memory.
As they should be.
You can't go "home" again.

Book Club Discussion Guide

The Women of Camp Sobingo is an ideal candidate for your next book club discussion.
For your convenience, I have added here a Discussion Guide to keep you on track and stimulate your imaginations.
Have fun!

1. Why does the book open with a prologue? Is it central to the main plot? Does it intrigue you to wonder why this woman is so wracked with pain and guilt from so long ago?
2. Discuss Trudy Cavanaugh. How did she rise to the position of power she has now? '
3. Discuss Nell Martin. Does she seem real? Why or why not?
4. Discuss Maggie Gorski. Does she seem real? Why or why not?
5. Discuss Leah Damon. How did she end up as an army officer's wife? Why did she leave her high priced modeling life? Does she seem real? Why or why not? '
6. The Colonel is a really cruel man. How did you deduce that from the first mention of his name?
7. The men seem to be getting short shrift in this novel. Do you agree? Why or why not?
8. Can you visualize the camp and its population? Could you live this way? Why or why not?
9. What lay behind Leah's death? Can you understand her pain? Why or why not?
10. Discuss Trudy's relationship with her father-in-law and what did you think of it? Was it wrong or not to cut Phillip out of the succession to Colin's position on the board?
11. Why is Katherine Cavanaugh so aloof to Trudy when they first meet? How would you have handled it?
12. Why did it take so long for the women to tell Trudy their feelings about Leah's death?
13. Would you like to see a sequel to this book? That Cavanaugh Woman would carry on with Trudy's rise to position of power in the industry and the pitfalls that she must dodge along the way.




The Women of Camp Sobingo

Welcome to The Women of Camp Sobingo

Four women from varying backgrounds meet aboard the USS General Mayo bound for Korea in 1946 to join their Army officer husbands. The diverse young women forge bonds that will last them throughout the journey, their lives in a military compound, with a promise to meet again in twenty-five years. Trudy Cavanaugh is a young newly-wed, married to the heir to the Cavanaugh publishing empire; Maggie Gorski is from Chicago, the comic relief of the group, who has two unmanageable boys and a heart as big as her home town, Chicago; Nell Martin, a west Texas farm girl who thought she was escaping her parents' wood-burning stove and lack of running water, only to encounter the same living conditions in Korea; and Leah Damon, born in OK as Mary Alice Thomason, is a famous model with a drinking and pill problem who ultimately commits suicide in her cold and lonely military-provided quarters; Their childhoods are explored; meeting their husbands and, although they are completely different, they form a bond that brings them together 25 years later, where long-held dark secrets and sorrows are revealed.

Available in print and ALL eBook formats:

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The Women of Camp Sobingo