A TALE OF TWO CULTURES

I met Carol Van Kirk at church. When she discovered we were authors, she said she had been working on a book for years. I invited her to join Lagunita Writers, our critique group.

She brought chapters of her book, and everyone looked forward to learning more of her story each week. Her writing was outstanding, and she had a compelling story to tell.

Then came the pandemic…

The group stopped meeting, and the majority did not want to continue via Zoom.

I knew Carol was anxious to get her book finished and published. I called her, and we worked on the edit together. When it was ready, she published it.

Her husband, Nick, a graphic artist, produced an amazing cover.

The Yellow Lizard: A Tale of Two Cultures is Carol’s memoir. Written with contributions from her daughter, Allison Langbridge, Carol tells the bittersweet, and often funny, story of sharing the raising of her children between Southern California and Tahiti.

As a recently divorced mom of two teenagers, Carol agreed to paternal visitation rights of every other weekend and a month in the summer for her children. Soon after the marital dust settled, however, Dad moved to the remote island of Moorea in French Polynesia, aka Tahiti.

Thus began summers in Tahiti for these two over-indulged kids. Eventually, Allison graduated from school and settled into a conventional job and lifestyle in California. Her brother Alec, however, fell in love with and married a local vahine, Anne. This bicultural couple launched a vagabond lifestyle between an Island Paradise in the South Pacific and staid Orange County, California, filled with adventures, mostly comical and implausible. When two children arrived, however, they settled into a house in Opunohu Bay on Moorea. Subsequently, Grandma Carol became a regular visitor on this island that many people, including James Michener, have referred to as the most beautiful island in the South Pacific. Over the years, she became familiar with the Tahitian traditions and superstitions, some she embraced, others she found amusing, absurd, and sometimes downright scary.

But when tragedy struck, it was the Tahitians, not her American friends, who brought peace and comfort with their close spiritual connections to nature. Who then, she wonders, are the unsophisticated primitives?

The book includes many photos. I created a video trailer for it (something I rarely do for books I edit).

The book is available on Amazon in print and Kindle versions. I’m sure you will enjoy reading about her adventures in Paradise.

CAROL VAN KIRK is a technical writer and editor, who has written for various publications including alternative healthcare periodicals, trade journals and technical manuals, training manuals and online computer Help systems. She was copy editor three years for the magazine Yerevan, which was circulated internationally.

The Yellow Lizard was written as a project to share her family’s unusual background and history with the younger generation, but it soon grew into a full-fledged memoir. She is currently at work on a book of myths and legends of the Maohi Tahitians. Carol currently lives in southern California with her daughter and great-grandson.

Guest Blogger Shirley Skufca Hickman

This week, my guest is Shirley Skufca Hickman. I have been blessed to have edited several of her books and have enjoyed them very much. Welcome, Shirley.

I love books. When I was seven and living in a Colorado coal mining town during World War II, I told myself I had to remember what I was experiencing so I could write a book about it when I was older.

I kept my promise, and as an adult, I wrote my first memoir, Don’t Be Give Up, about the war from a perspective of a child.

Everything in our lives was affected by the war, the rationing of food, clothing, shoes, gasoline, and candy, but the most terrifying days were seeing my uncles go to war and not knowing if they’d ever return. Luckily, they did.

One of the most gratifying aspects of writing this book was long conversations with my uncles. I never knew my Uncle Johnny had seen horrors of the Jewish concentration camps. He had never told anyone until we talked about the war. He wanted me to include his experiences so people would never forget the Holocaust.

When I asked my Uncle Rupert if he went to squadron reunions he said no. I asked him why and he said, “Because most of them never came back.” He had never talked about this until our conversation.

My uncles are gone now, and so are my parents, and my sisters, but all of them live forever in the pages of my books. We are a family once again, arguing, laughing, and fiercely loving one another.

Shirley Skufca Hickman grew up in a Colorado coal mining town, during World War II. As an adult, she wrote about the war from a child’s point of view in Don’t Be Give Up.

In 1947, the mine closed, forcing the family to move. Living in three rooms and sleeping in the kitchen with her two older sisters, she wondered if they’d ever have a real home again. Whenever her father made life better for the family, he’d ask: Is Everybody Happy Now? This became the title of her next memoir.

She enjoyed her high school years until her father’s death devastated the family. Without his love and financial support, they might have lost their home. Family is Forever is about their love for one another and how they coped.

Shirley graduated from college and became a teacher. She wrote Fall in Love with An Orange Tree or a Book about a teenager who lived in the shadows because she was in the U.S. illegally.

When parents asked her to recommend a book to help their children, she wrote: School Success: Five Hundred Ways Busy Parents Can Help their Children in School.

She wrote Sarah Darlin’, a romance novel set in San Francisco during the Gold Rush. Before Sarah and her lover could be together, they must deal with prejudice, a fire, and a terrible secret from Sarah’s past.

Her latest memoir is about her journey to marriage, Rocky Road is More Than a Candy Bar.

Her books are available on Amazon.

Her greatest joys are her son, his wife, and their two boys.