Chapter One: The Quiet Middle Child Ten miles approximately outside of Challis, Idaho, the land was wide and stubborn, stitched with sagebrush and willows, and broken only by the thin ribbon of a creek that ran through the ranch. It was here that Ella Jo grew up, the quiet middle child in a family that worked the land with their hands and their hope. Her father ran sheep on the open hills, a small herd that provided both wool and lamb for the table. Every spring, the shearers would arrive, their clippers buzzing as piles of fleece rolled to the ground, the smell of lanolin filling the air. Her mother kept a great vegetable garden and a potato patch big

As this year ends, I find myself thinking less about resolutions and more about roots. This has been a year of stories—some joyful, some frightening, some exhausting, and some still unfolding. It has been a year that reminded me, repeatedly that life does not move in straight lines. It loops. It bends. It surprises us. And sometimes it brings us right back to the hearth—the place where stories begin. This year, Hearthwise Tales grew in ways I couldn’t have predicted. Three children’s books entered the world, each one carrying imagination, warmth, and a belief that stories still matter—especially for children growing up in loud, fast times. Watching Ender the Chicken Tender take his first steps into young readers’ hands has

Endurance, Love, and All the Things We Never Saw as Children This summer has been one of those that flips life upside down — the Harley crash, the injuries, the slow healing, and now sitting in medical waiting rooms where courage has to be quiet and steady. For a woman who has lived through deployments, police shifts, danger, and emergencies, this is the part no one trains you for. This is the part that scares me most — the waiting, the unknown, the things I can’t control. And as I sit with that fear, I find myself thinking a lot about endurance — where I learned it, what it looked like when I was young, and how it shows up

“Can I have a second sheet?” That’s when I knew something magical had happened. There’s nothing quite like the sound of pencil on paper. Not the tapping of keys or the buzz of notifications — just the soft scratch of ideas coming alive. Substitute teaching a 6th-grade class is often unpredictable. There are behavior struggles, social conflicts, ADHD, IEPs, and the inevitable “he said this!” / “she did that!” moments. That morning began the same way — loud, chaotic, energy everywhere except where it needed to be. Our first block was English Language Arts. The assignment: a writing prompt. Instead of pushing through with directions, I told a story. I shared how writing can feel like opening a door no