In the summer of 1960, when six-year-old Linda Parker moves from New York to Texas, she expects to enter the world of her cowboy idols and get a horse, like the Lone Ranger's Silver or Roy Rogers' Trigger. Instead, her family moves into an Amarillo apartment complex and buys her a bird. As the "Hartz Mountain Master Radio Canaries" chirp "Return to Sorrento," Linda dreams of a proper pet and schemes escape from the town she considers "no man's land." She discovers real life isn't like television, but a quirky mixture of frustration and success, grief and joy.
About the Author: During the past three decades Jean West has worked to make history personal. For Hot Pepper Vinegar and Candied Ginger, she revisited her childhood experiences in Amarillo, Texas for an up-close and personal look at a girl and a nation coming of age in the early 1960s. Other forays into fiction include two Civil War mysteries, Mayhem at Manassas and Peril on the Peninsula, featuring her photographer-sleuth Rob McEntee. Her involvement with history began with a childhood fascination with Robin Hood and Francis Marion. By the time she was in high school, Jean was a volunteer docent in hoop skirts at Robert E. Lee's home in Arlington, Virginia. Naturally, she became a history teacher, but her love of writing eventually took her to the National Archives as an education specialist and finally, to become a social studies education consultant. Her award-winning lesson plans and historical essays have appeared on the internet and in print and include topics such as: * Ancient Egypt * Florida History * New York History * U.S History * U.S. Government * Teaching with Primary Sources and Historic Sites Jean has made presentations both formal and informal and to audiences as learned as participants in the National Council for Social Studies annual convention and as inquisitive as toddlers learning about the 4th of July. As a school volunteer, each year for over a decade she has donned a medieval outfit to help third graders understand the Middle Ages and conducted a gold rush with iron pyrite in kiddie pools for fifth graders. Artifacts, documents, old photographs and scratchy records, historic sites--all take us from the present to the past, so Jean also has: * Created computer slideshows for history, genealogy & teaching * Edited lesson plans for the National Park Service * Digitized slides, photographs and sound recordings