ABOUT A BIRD

Luanna Rugh is a close friend. I have edited several of her books. In addition, she participated in all six of the Aspen Grove Romance Anthologies.

Luanna’s stories nearly always include animals—usually dogs. Quite a while ago, she began a story with a scarlet macaw as a principal character. Other projects prevented her from finishing it, but I always loved it—especially the opening.

Up in Flames is a romance with lots of complications.

“Nine—one—one. What is the nature of your emergency?” “Our bird’s stuck in a tall tree.” “Young man, this number is for human emergencies only.” “It is. Honest, lady. My mom was trying to get our macaw down. Now her foot is caught and she’s stuck in the tree, too. I didn’t know what else to do.”

A young widow with a son in a new town, a bird stuck in a tree, an unsympathetic fire captain—how can this lead to romance? Lyanna Thomas and her son, Davey, have moved to Aspen Grove Colorado following her husband’s death. When their macaw, Scarlet, decides to go adventuring, a whole new world opens up for the family.

When our writing group had to stop meeting due to the pandemic, I encouraged Luanna to finish the book, and I did the final edit and formatting.

Larry designed the cover. 

Luanna knows all about macaws and parrots because she has one herself. She totally conveys their behavior. Scarlet is definitely a pivotal character in the book.

If you enjoy romance with a sense of humor, you will love this book.

LUANNA RUGH was born and raised on a dairy in Central California. She always loved animals, cats and dogs, cows and horses, not to mention the many wild animals living in the area. At ten, she decided she wanted to become a high school biology teacher.

Her family moved to Southern California the year she entered high school. Luanna followed her path in college until the summer of 1966. She worked at a local restaurant where she met the love of her life, Len Rugh. They were married in February of 1967. A year and a half later, Len was drafted and sent to Vietnam where he was critically wounded, but that’s another story.

When Len returned to California, she finished school and earned two teaching credentials in 1984.

At age fifty-seven, she discovered she could write when she co-authored the first of the six books in the Aspen Grove Romance Anthologies. She contributed to all six of them.

After she and Len published their award-winning memoir, Promises Kept: How One Couple’s Love Survived Vietnam, she decided to stretch her wings, and write on her own. She loves writing animals as supporting characters. In Love From the Sea, a dog plays a major role. In Up in Flames, another dog and a scarlet macaw are lead characters.

Her books are available in paperback and Kindle editions. Most are also available as audiobooks.

She hopes you enjoy reading them as much as she loved writing them.

My Favorite Photo

This is now officially my favorite photo. My high school friend and her husband visited with us a few weeks ago. One item on their agenda was a visit to Mission San Juan Capistrano. Both had gone there as children, but they hadn’t seen it lately.
 We had a wonderful day using both the audio tour from the mission and Larry’s comments about how specific places related to the story we told in our book, The Memory Keeper.

We arrived shortly after the mission opened, in time to see the Mission Garden Angels working on the grounds. This army of volunteers trims, plants, weeds, and generally takes care of all the flora in the mission every Wednesday morning. They maintain the water lilies in the fountains and keep the whole place looking its best. While there, we ran into several friends, including docents, the executive director, and the buyer for the mission store. We told them Lola, The Parrot Who Saved the Mission was published, and we expected our first copies at any time. Most of them remembered her name from a presentation we did for the docents a couple of years ago.

When we returned home, the package with our copies had arrived. We were able to send one home with our friends for their grandson, Taylor. Yesterday, she posted this photo to my Facebook profile. I am delighted. The look on Taylor’s face is exactly the reaction I’d hoped for when I first started this project. As of this week, both the store at Mission San Jun Capistrano and the Cottage Gallery on Los Rios carry the book. We hope all children who now visit the mission will know the name Lola and her story. Do you have your copy yet? It’s available on Amazon in print or ebook. It’s also available through our website. But if you are visiting San Juan Capistrano, why not pick up your copy at the mission store? We donate a portion of the sale of each book to the mission to help preserve this jewel.

How We Met Lola

Over a year ago, while researching the sequel to The Memory Keeper, Becoming the Jewel, Larry discovered a newspaper clipping about Lola, Father O’Sullivan’s parrot.

This was a new story to us. Further research led us to other information about the parrot. In the book Capistrano Nights by Charles Francis Saunders and Father St. John O’Sullivan, we found a reference to her. And we discovered that the copy of a Charles Percy Austin painting in the mission actually contained the bird. (We had seen this picture many times and had never noticed the parrot.)

Further research revealed yet another image of the bird, Joseph Kleitsh’s Sunday Morning.

A while ago, we were asked to do a presentation for the mission docents about the history of San Juan Capistrano in the 1800s. At the end, we asked who knew about the parrot. Only one person raised a hand. We asked if anyone knew the bird’s name. No one did.

We later found additional articles about Lola. Her death was reported in newspapers across the country. She died just a few months before Father O’Sullivan himself, and he buried her in the old cemetery behind the chapel. Father O’Sullivan was first buried in a cemetery in Lake Forest, but he was later moved to the old mission cemetery. He and Lola ended up in the same place, just where they both would have wanted to be.

We felt it was time for Lola’s story to be told. We decided to tell it from her point of view for children. I wrote the text, and Larry did the illustrations.

This story felt like a gift and also a responsibility. The information came to us as unbidden. The only question we had was: who was the young man pictured in the clipping? We knew it wasn’t Father O’Sullivan. By this time, he was too old.

A few months ago the Blas Aguilar adobe in San Juan was restored and reopened to the public. We attended the celebration the day the museum was reopened. I walked into the bedroom and looked around. Suddenly, I saw a photo with the same young man in it. His name is Juan Jesus Aguilar. We finally had all the pieces.

The book is now published and is sold at The Cottage Gallery on Los Rios in San Juan Capistrano. It will soon be available at the mission store.

Have you read it yet? Did you enjoy it? Even those who have written several books on the history of the town had never heard the story. But now everyone knows about Lola and how she saved the mission.