I believe everyone has an interesting life story. Since I read Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt, I have been aware of the power of a well-told story of childhood.

I have written nearly 20 pieces of a projected 24-story memoir that examines the highlights (and lowlights) of my life up to age 19. Two of the pieces have been published.

For an MFA Creative Writing class at Indiana University, I was given a three-page assignment to write about "The Worst Thing I Ever Did." When I finished, the professor said it was my best work to date, and she encouraged me to expand that story. It was called "The Rabbit," and the expanded version was published in 1996.

Over time, I sketched out the rest of the book, and it is almost done. I have found the energy to write it from the following experience:

I gave a copy of the journal that contained "The Rabbit" to a friend who was a fourth-grade teacher. As she had a number of students who lived in single-parent homes or with stepparents, she decided to have the class read the story. (She didn't tell me ahead of time.)

She planned to spend one day on vocabulary and one day on the issue of resilience in the story. The students kept her on the story for a week. They wanted to know what happened to the little boy. They wanted reassurance that he was ok. Finally, she told them she knew the author (ooooh!) and she asked if I would talk to the class.

I was glad for the opportunity, and I wound up visiting that group three times. The first time was the most important, as I was able to prove to them that, even when you have a rough patch in your childhood, you can survive to adulthood and make something of yourself.

For that reason, I have chosen to put the entire chain of events in context through these stories. I have already been rewarded greatly through this experience with "The Rabbit," and I hope a larger audience will find the story enlightening as well.