by Merrill J. Davies (Author)
Young Gwen Thomas has her heart set on learning to play her grandfather's big harp in her living room. When she and her family leave the Rhondda Valley in Wales and sail for America in 1903, she convinces her mother to bring the harp along, but when they arrive in the coal mining area of Eastern Kentucky, she must learn many other things first-like how to deal with a hostile school environment, how to help her mother birth a baby, and how to survive a flood. Can she keep her dream of being a harpist alive? Or should she set more practical goals?
Author Biography
The Author Merrill Johnson Davies has been writing and publishing most of her life. Beginning in high school in Southeastern Kentucky as feature editor of The Hazel Nut, and continuing throughout her thirty-one years of teaching high school English, she has always enjoyed writing and teaching writing. When she retired from teaching in 2003, she began to focus more on her efforts to write fiction, including many revisions of The Welsh Harp, her first novel, written in the late 1980's. In addition to writing, Merrill is active in Toastmasters, The Georgia Council of Teachers of English, the National Council of Teachers of English, and her church. She also enjoys spending time with her husband and two daughters and their families, including six grandchildren. Merrill and her husband Bill live in Rome, Georgia. Recently Published Works "The First Time in Years" (short story) and "A Week With Grandma" (poem) in Shout Them from the Mountain Tops: Georgia Poems and Stories, Volume 2, February 2012 (Legacy Press) "Making the Leap From High School to College Writing," an essay included in What Is "College Level" Writing? Volume 2: Assignments, Readings, and Sample Student Writing from High School and College Classrooms, published by the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), 2010 "My Time is Your Time," May 2010 The Toastmaster, magazine for Toastmasters International "Teaching Writing Without Becoming Buried in the Paperwork," article published in Connections, a journal of The Georgia Council of Teachers of English (Summer 2009) "Whistling in the Dark," essay included in What Is College Level Writing? published by the National Council of teachers of English (NCTE) in 2006