Many moons ago, my youngest daughter challenged me to write a book about a homeschool family. This turned out to be an incredibly difficult assignment for several of reasons.

First, I wanted to try writing in first person, something I had never done before. This story is told through the eyes of the Carmen Finelli, homeschool mother of five, and it reads like a personal journal. Writing from Carmen’s perspective was more challenging than I anticipated, but it was also tremendous fun.

Second, while I wanted to give readers a window into the world of homeschooling, I did not want this to be a documentary or how-to manual. Rather, I wanted to address a particular struggle common to most  women (men, too, for that matter!), whether they homeschool or not. Weaving together color photos of day-to-day homeschool life with snapshots of Carmen’s internal life (her thoughts and emotions), proved to be somewhat like working a complicated jigsaw puzzle. This has been a fun puzzle to piece together, and I am super pleased with the final result.

Third, this book was difficult to write because, to a certain extent, it is my story. No, this is not an autobiography:  I am not Carmen Finelli! However, in writing about Carmen, I drew heavily from my own experience as a homeschool mom. Writing this book required me to ask hard, sometimes uncomfortable questions of myself, and I have struggled with the issue of “How much of the truth about homeschool life do I really want to tell?”

The book  has been two years in the making, and it is almost ready to go to print. I can’t wait to welcome you back to Tatum County and to introduce you to Chesterfield’s newest homeschool family – you are going to love the Finellis!