Barbara Palmgren

Keystone Girl in the Sunshine State Barbara Palmgren

Inspired by lives of real women, this work of fiction reveals a story of courage as two women struggle to adapt and succeed despite a cycle of family violence that could perpetuate itself. Grace Wilson, from Pennsylvania, moves to the Florida Panhandle in the early 1950s. She falls in love with a man whose father endured beatings as a child from a violent mother. Once married, she finds herself trapped in a nightly recurrence of abuse as her children hide from their father's drunken rages. Marie Butler, an ambitious Southern girl from a large family, marries a man she thinks has 'potential' and can move her from a boring life to a world of excitement during the depression years of the 1930s. Throughout her life, she uses her beauty and wiles to influence her ambitions. Despite setbacks, losses, and betrayal, she seizes opportunities to build a legacy where her name and deeds will be remembered. Their paths cross throughout the years, and their personal relationship changes as they grow older in this fictitious county in northern Florida, whose landscape is transformed as dramatically as the lives of our two heroines. In Keystone Girl in the Sunshine State, the author hopes the reader will bond with two women in their quest for love, success, and second chances.