GAIL PINER
A High Courage
Widowed. Homeless. Alone
How will a brave young woman support her six children in a man's world?
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When her husband dies suddenly in 1928, North Carolina farm wife, Mary Heath, has to figure out how to raise her six children alone, evicted from the house she thought they owned. LEARN MORE.
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My Story
Gail Piner is a retired academic who is finally pursuing the career she thought she’d have when she was twelve. She doesn’t recommend waiting as long as she did to pursue your dreams. Gail is interested in strong women, resilience, and the humor and hope that can help us get through difficult times.
Her first novel, A High Courage, is about all those topics and is based on the best example she has known personally—her grandmother. When not writing, she spends her time obeying her little Maltese/Bichon rescue pup, Katie Pogo, who has a real attitude. Gail lives on the coast of North Carolina, where her main forms of exercise are dodging beach traffic, hurricanes, and alligators.
A High Courage
When her husband dies suddenly in 1928, North Carolina farmwife, Mary Heath, has to figure out how to raise her six children alone. After her husband's funeral, she learns she doesn't even own the house she called home. In the days before the Wall Street Crash of 1929, Mary and her children move in with her aging parents. Struggling to find work, and avoiding the plots of relatives who only see the children as a chance to have free labor for their tobacco farms, Mary searches for a way to keep her family safe and together.
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Faced with an option she once would have considered horrific, Mary must decide what is best for her children, even if it breaks her heart.
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Based on the true story of the author's grandmother, A High Courage is told with humor and hope. Mary's dilemma and story of those harrowing fifteen months honors the memory of the resilience and bravery of an amazing woman.
