Karen is a retired teacher, and now a prolific author in her own right, with five titles to her credit. We have been married for four decades. Besides writing, she enjoys the gym, our three cats and traveling.

Parham’s Mill is Karen’s first book, a young adult fantasy set in in a small town by that name in Appalachia in the 1950’s. Some of the residents of that town have a secret they have kept hidden for generations - but then a stranger comes to town with evil in his wake.

Ruby is a much more serious book. When Ruby loses her job in Depression-era Norfolk, she boards a Greyhound for home. That bus will take her, not to her family, but to shame and degradation, to a life she never envisioned. Escape from that misery eventually comes, and she seeks to rebuild her life, while helping other women rebuild theirs. The road to peace and a new life will not be an easy one for her.

The book earned the Pinnacle Book Award for Women’s Interest and the eLit Gold Medal Award

Jake Boone is a friend of Ruby’s when she desperately needed a friend. He is now a doctor in Virginia, treating survivors of The Great War. In 1939. he went to the movies to see The Wizard of Oz for a brief respite. Little did he know that the newsreel of the German invasion of Poland would radically reshape the next five years of his life. Joining the Royal Army Medical Corps, he is assigned to the 51st Highland Division, seeing the British side of the war in Europe through American eyes, from the Battle of France to El Alamein, from North Africa to Normandy. Returning home damaged in body and soul, Jake is haunted by the men he could not save, and the love he found and lost.

This book earned the Pinnacle Book Award for historical fiction

Norma sat up, calling out, the nightmare vivid in her mind. Not again, she sighed. Sleep would not come again tonight. Pillows scrunched up against the head of the bed, she leaned back, wrapping her arms around her knees. In the dark hours of the night, Norma’s demons often rose up to torment her.

It is 1943, and Norma becomes a WASP, a Women’s Airforce Service Pilot, choosing to use her pilot’s license to aid in the country’s war effort. As a WASP, she will ferry planes around the country, tow targets for artillery training, and much more. Told through the struggles of a young woman, this is the story of just one part of the war that played out in mainland America.