Wagons South!: Historical Saga of Three Families

Though this book is a family saga, my parents shared very little family history with my brothers and me. My father’s life is shrouded in mystery, but flavored occasionally with stark truths. Therefore this is a work of fiction, albeit based on fact. It is the story of the Mitchell, McCallum, Yelvington, and Williams families and their various journeys to Florida in quest of a new life. Most of all, it is the story of my mother, Ople Williams. I could not have known my mother during her own childhood. But the mother-daughter relationship we shared during her life has enabled me to write a novel about her. To any fabricated scene I write, I can conjure her essence. I knew her more than intimately, more deeply than our physical time permitted. Any story she told me I can elaborate on and know how she would have reacted to her environment and its situations. She told me little, but the things she did tell me sparked my interest to write the book she never got around to writing. Even though we thought very differently, I still can call up the Ople in me and put it on paper.