I am an aspiring first-time writer, a retired educator who taught children to read and encouraged them to write for over 35 years. As Jacqueline Kennedy stated, "There are many little ways to enlarge your child's world. Love of books is the best of all." As a child, my fondest memories involved reading books and sharing them with my closest friends; I am addicted to literature! Therefore, upon retirement, I decided to embark on a journey to uncover the realities that made my mother who she was. It has been a fascinating voyage, and I am more knowledgeable about the history of the twentieth century now than I was during all those years in the classroom. My mother is not famous, at least not in the usual sense. Instead, she made inroads for other women, including her three daughters, which resonate to this day as trailblazers. The history surrounding her life is filled with incredible victories on a global scale as well as simply personally. Women were not appreciated as intelligent, able-bodied and purposeful beings except (sometimes!) in the privacy of their homes. Mother knew life for women had to change, and she internalized proclamations from early feminists such as Margaret Sanger who said, "Woman must not accept; she must challenge. She must not be awed by that which has been built up around her; she must reverence that woman in her which struggles for expression." My manuscript, Hitch Your Wagon to a Star, chronicles a woman's life from the poverty of the 1920's through the years of the Oil Boom, the Great Depression, and an amazing emergence from those years based on the economy's reaction to World War II. It continues into the Post War years of the "Red Scare" and the Baby Boom and culminates with a personal change that engenders a new focus and a second chance at life. Because my book is historically true and based on research, I am calling it a biographical novel. Names were not changed and are real. The heart of my book is the truth that possibilities exist and can become realities for those who are sufficiently determined and is based on conquering difficulties in the face of a daunting list of stumbling blocks. For the protagonist, her successes gave rise to what Henri Frederic Amiel described when he said, "Conquering any difficulty always gives a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty."