Read our latest author interview on WE Magazine for Women, Lareida Buckley, Stories From the Sheriff’s Daughter – Worth reading…
ABOUT THE BOOK
is a beautifully written short novel that follows the life of a nine-year-old girl who moves to a small-town Texas county jail when her dairy farmer father is elected sheriff. In these engaging episodes, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, days in small-town Texas in the 1950s and 60s spring to life. The family’s house is only separated from the jail by a carport, so the sheriff’s daughter grows up in the jail’s environment of lawmen, prisoners, and politics. She bumps up against some of life’s worst tragedies, including murder, rape, and suicide, despite her parents’ attempts to protect her innocence. In this very different coming-of-age story, the sheriff’s daughter moves into adulthood, trying to find her own identity, her life forever affected by growing up next door to a county jail. Though the stories in the novel are fiction, the author actually did grow up at the Burleson County jail in Texas, where her father, and eventually her mother, served as sheriffs of the county.My book is a fictional retelling of my own coming of age story. When I was nine, my family moved into the living quarters of the county jail when my father was elected sheriff. We lived for the next 15 years across the carport from the jail, and the book’s narrator tells stories of her experiences with the lawmen, prisoners and politics of smalltown Texas in the 50’s and 60’s, and how they affected her life.
It’s my hope that people will enjoy the stories, some funny and some tragic. Though based in general on real happenings, the stories are fiction. That allowed me to be creative and to enjoy the recreation of my coming of age story without the constraints of a memoir. And the fiction was so much fun to write. I could add humor via a sarcastic grandmother, and include tragedy that was beyond the understanding of the narrator at the time. My father and mother, the sheriffs and these stories, were dedicated law enforcement officers, and wonderful parents, all at the same time. I hope that the stories in some way honor them.
I was always a writer, it was just that no one knew it. Journals, writer’s groups, writing classes, even letters. Once I even had business cards made with the simple title, “Writer”, though in my real life I had a country mail route along the ocean in Hawaii.
I was fascinated by writer’s lives and their stories of success on the bestseller lists, and even their failures…rejection letters and such. The beautiful Stones for Ibarra, a first novel when Helen Doerr was 74 years old gave me hope as I grew older. After retirement, I took the chance and submitted my manuscript about growing up in the county jail to a university press . It was accepted! The stories, written over many years, with so many revisions and false starts is now a book I can hold in my hands. I am now a published author. At 76 years old, my debut novel was published by TCU Press, April 21, 2023. I am a Writer! Business cards on the way.
