Above is the cover of the proof-copy of the final book in my family heritage trilogy, which will be available on Amazon, March 31. My editor, Joanna Kenyon, and I are now in the process of proof-reading and making final changes.

Joanna not only edits, she also designs the interiors of my books and creates the covers, each of which has used a painting by Paul Buxman. I love the covers Joanna created for my first to two books, and I love this one as well. It is a winter scene of the Sierra Nevada mountains viewed from the farmland just east of Dinuba, the town where my father’s family lived when I was growing up, the town my father returned to after my mother died.

I spent six weeks in Dinuba in the winter of 1994 while my husband Bill was on sabbatical in Berkeley, doing research for a lecture series he’d been asked to give. I had just finished my doctoral dissertation and was taking advantage of the chance to spend extended time in Dinuba with my father and begin research for the book I’d long wanted to write his family. Each day I would take a long walk, and late one afternoon, as I was walking east the storm clouds that covered the sky opened up. Suddenly, there in front of me were mountains, huge, glistening white mountains. Glorious, breath-taking. I’d never realized how close they were to Dinuba, had never thought much about them before. Those mountains had always been there, of course, but because of the Valley’s prevailing haze and fog they tend to be either completely invisible or just a dark blue band on the horizon. I’d never seen them like this before, and I longed to somehow capture what I saw and felt, but no words came. No words could do justice to those winter mountains.

Then, while visiting with Ruth and Paul Buxman on that same visit to Dinuba, I came across the painting you can partially see in the photo above. This was it. This captured what I saw and felt that day when the clouds opened up. Paul said I could use any of his paintings for my book cover, and I wanted use this one, but another painting fit better what I wanted to capture in that first book. That was also true for my second book. Now, however, that painting is perfect. I finally get to use it.

I am older now than my father was when I stayed with him the winter of 1994. Dad was then in his final years, and I am now in mine. This third book of the trilogy is not about old age, but it is told from the perspective of a person who has lived a very long time. The painting of the snow-clad mountains finally fits. I love having it on the cover of my final book.