Local Author's

 Mary Ellen Goble Preece is the author of: In This Valley I Grew, Life on Blacklog and Happy Hollow.

In this book, I hope to be able to reach many people with my simplistic way of writing.  After all, I am a simple woman with simple stories to tell.  My upbringing, the rearing of my own children, the love for my family, for my God and my Appalachian Hillbilly roots is the sum of me.  Read my book and get my real life experience of what it was like in the fifties and sixties as told in the only way I know how to tell it through my eyes as a child and young adult that believed in God all her life and had a loving home, with no abuse, although times were hard.

Excerpts from: In This Valley I Grew, Life on Blacklog and Happy Hollow by Mary Ellen Goble Preece.

Christmastime

As Christmastime approached every year, humble signs appeared around the neighborhood trying to mark a very special occasion, the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  They might not have all been decorated with everything in accordance to a religious holiday, but most of the children back then, knew that it meant the birth of Jesus.  Today many children even in the country region with all its churches have not heard His name mentioned in their homes.  Evergreen branches adorned windowsills and sparsely branched pine trees cut from the mountainsides served as Christmas Trees.  There were bunches of mistletoe and holly branches with red berries.  The Christmas trees were adorned only in popcorn strung on strings.  Maybe only a star cut from cardboard, covered in aluminum foil served as the tree topper or it may have hung from a sting in the window, to add a little sparkle to the holiday.  It was so much fun to cut cardboard stars, wrap them in foil paper and hang them in windows.  Even the pictures we got to color of Santa Claus at school were hung up somewhere in the house, or on the windows.  Christmas cards were treated as if they were priceless possessions and were used to decorate the front room of the house on the doors or walls.

If you would like to purchase this book, visit Mary's website at http://www.freewebs.com/megpreece

or at: http://www.publishamerica.com , http://www.barnesandnoble.com , http://www.amazon.com .