Betty Taylor lives with her husband, Orville, in Hartley, Iowa. She has three children and six grandchildren. As a retired teacher, she found encouraging and facilitating writing to be the most rewarding part of her classroom experience. In their retirement years Orv and Betty sold antiques from their home shop, malls, flea markets and shows. Their extensive travels in the United States and Canada combined tourism with buying antiques to restock their shelves. in the past few years Betty has traded her obsession with antiques for an obsession with writing.

"Betty Taylor has put together a loving assortment of poems and essays here, on subjects as various as plants passed down from daughter to daughter through the generations, to the forgetfulness that accompanies aging, to the metaphors in patched windows of stained glass. The collection will be evocative for those who collect antiques, be they Hummel figures, depression-glass cracker jars, or parlor tables with ball-and-claw feet. But it will also be meaningful for anyone with the habit of looking back. Linger here if you too have walked again on childhood paths, and been caught up in the deep memories they evoke."
Nancy L. Jones, Ph.D., director of the Writing Center at the University of Iowa College of Law

The Earth Abides
(memoir/anthology)
Now Available

Herman and Lena Hembd’s collected letters are compiled in Dear Folks. Their daughter, Betty Taylor, coordinated the project. Other typists and proofreaders include daughter, Esther Todd and grandchildren, Darlene Sopko, Carol Brownson, Glen Brockshus, Joe Hembd, Becky Siemonsma, Wendy Pine, and Ruth Todd.
Marjorie Brockshus, another daughter, arranged to have the letters copied. Then she and Betty divided those copies and sent them to typists in Iowa, Missouri, South Dakota and California. This was truly a group effort, providing time to reflect on roots and bond once more with the past and with each other.

The original letters have been archived in South Dakota.     

 Dear Folks

Now Available