Tag Archive for 'Mary Deal'

I’d like to extend a warm Aloha to Mary Deal, author of four suspense/thriller novels. Mary is an Eric Hoffer Book Award winner and Pushcart Prize nominee. She also writes short stories and poetry from her island home in Kapa`a, Hawaii. Her website, writeanygenre.com, is a valuable resource for writers.

Mary’s character, Abigail (Abi) Fisher from her thriller Down to the Needle is answering the question “What were you doing 25 years ago?” In Down to the Needle, a woman’s long search for her abducted child leads to a young woman on death row facing lethal injection for a crime she didn’t commit.

ABIGAIL: In the mid-1980s, my daughter Becky Ann was three years old and loved crayons. She could draw! So young and she was able to match colors, too. She stayed inside the lines of a picture, even chose which picture to color and passed on others. It was difficult keeping her in crayons and coloring books. Then one day I noticed her drawing household objects with regular lead pencils.

My husband, Preston, had been going through some serious personal problems. He wanted a boy. I kept telling him we could have another child. He would have his boy.

Against my husband’s wishes, I took Becky Ann to a child psychologist. She told me that it seemed my daughter was gifted! I was both ecstatic and humbled at the same time. We set up a battery of tests. Preston wasn’t impressed. He said if he had his boy, he’d train him to work. I can’t pinpoint when Preston began to change. Mom always said he would turn me into misfortune’s daughter.

Becky was abducted only two years later, after we confirmed she was truly gifted. I never got to see her grow up and watch her creative abilities develop; never got to hear her say “I love you, Mommy.” Becky’s abductor kept her in hiding and changed her face so I couldn’t find her. A result of the life she was forced to live, she languished nine years on death row facing lethal injection for a crime she claimed she didn’t do.

To learn more about Mary’s work, visit her web site. Read more about Down to the Needle on Amazon and check out Mary’s other books on Amazon.