Geraldine Wierzbicki-Roach was born, raised and educated in Buffalo, New York and earned her Ph.D. in English literature from SUNY Buffalo. Her dissertation focused on the novels of George Eliot and Dorothy Richardson. She has taught in colleges in and around the city for seven years. Gerry and her husband, Robert, reside in West Seneca, a town near the city she knows so well and which serves as the setting for the novel. As a single mother facing financial stress and hard work, Gerry raised a daughter and two sons, all of whom have brought her great pride. She believes we do not understand our own happiness. “Looking back on that challenge, I remember the strength my children gave me and realize that the years I thought were difficult were some of the happiest years in my life.” She frequently visits her twelve grandchildren, who are scattered throughout the northeast.

Memories Flow

I’ve loved writing since I could hold a pencil and have in my possession a novel written in fifth grade, complete with hand-drawn illustrations, chapter headings and a “foreword by the author.” During a difficult adolescence and the trials each of us encounters in life, writing has remained my shelter, my way of coping with unhappiness, at times severe, like my divorce at a young age.

My love of reading and my decision to study literature when I began college seems naturally intertwined with the love of writing.

I never had an agent but came close to publication. Rejection letters outweighed the encouragement. After many attempts, it’s easy to think one is not good enough. I don’t believe this but I tired of the long waits for responses, the uncertainty of knowing whether one’s work had been read or found its death at the bottom of the slush pile and the expense involved in packaging and mailing.

I’ve decided to be my own editor and publisher. The reader will judge merit but whatever the verdict, I know that my writing, all literary writing, is a gift presented to the reader, a gift of the author’s deepest self. The gift may be welcomed or not, and that choice always remains, but I know love flows from the voice on the page to the reader hearing that voice.

My writing gravitates toward the psychological. Actions aren’t always what they appear. The inner self, the thoughts and feelings which don’t display themselves, define our actions. My aim is to explore that inner self, attempting to touch the deeper truth in what the characters present. I write about the male sex with ease, believing, as Virginia Woolf did, that a good fiction writer must be able to write about both sexes.