Where's Stephanie? Is a faith-filled story about a grandmother placing clues in unlikely places, hoping her granddaughter, who was placed for adoption, will one day follow the clues and find her. When her granddaughter Stephanie was born, Anna Weber got to hold her before saying goodbye. Longing to see her granddaughter again, she places clues in unlikely places, including a letter in Stephanie's Social Services file, hoping that one day, by some miracle, Stephanie will follow the clues and find her. Based on actual events, this inspirational novel follows Anna on a long journey about loss, separation, and the power of family love. Realizing others are facing similar situations, Livingston provides readers with a list of adoption groups that can help in search for surrendered family members.
About the Author: At age seventy-five, Lenora Livingston wrote her debut novel, Where's Stephanie? A Story of Love, Faith, and Courage. As a child in the 1940's, she wrote poetry in her three-room, three-teacher, wooden schoolhouse that covered grades one through six. The school had a potbellied stove, a hand pump outside for its water source, and a path to a two-seater privy. Her mother died of leukemia at age thirty-one, leaving seven children behind, between the ages five months and thirteen years old. She was the middle child. Her father did not remarry until they were all grown. Her first published work was her poem "In Memoriam" when she was was seventeen.
As a mother to three children, ages one, three, and five, Lenora enrolled at the University of South Carolina, first studying by correspondence because she lacked transportation and could not afford a sitter. After taking the maximum courses allowed by correspondence, she attended night school and later day classes, taking nine-and-a-half years to earn her BA in Education.
As a middle-school, social studies/English teacher, she earned her MAT in Geography by taking classes at night, weekends, and summers. She later attended The Citadel to become a school guidance counselor.
Her short story entitled "My Pop Was My Mom," a humorous tribute to her father who reared her and four of her siblings as a single dad, was published in The State Magazine shortly before he passed away at age seventy-three. She published West Columbia, USA, a History-Geography book, including illustrations, which was a tribute to the town where she lived in her teen and young adult years. Her writings included creating programs for the school system. As a middle-school teacher, she won statewide recognition for developing and implementing a Conservation Education Teaching Unit and later, as a guidance counselor, she received statewide recognition for developing and implementing a Character Education Word-of-the-Month program, which was adopted by other schools in her state.
As a free lance writer, she has also written numerous articles for a half dozen newspapers.
