Pat Wakeley

The Velma Stories Pat Wakeley

Born in 1911 and living well into the 1990s, Velma is a twentieth-century woman. She lived a charmed childhood, but love and marriage brought unexpected challenges: her husband, her children, her dreams. Slowly, as she struggled to find and assert her true self, Velma's life grew fuller and happier. The Velma Stories illuminate key points in Velma's life from 1923 to 1996. Some of the fourteen stories are told in her own voice. Others feature the voices of family and friends. All are very loosely based, on the life of the author's stepmother-together the stories follow the arc of a real woman's life. Velma's struggle, though very much her own, also suggests the lives of many women of her generation: middle class, mid-century, middle-aged, mid-continental, but still individual, still themselves. Altogether, The Velma Stories offer a sympathetic portrayal of women who have too often been caricatured. Velma deserves better.