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By Wendy SchultzReviewed by Pennell Paugh
July 22, 2024 (San Diego) -- Wendy Schultz, a resident of Oceanside, recently released a fictional story, River of Light. It seems so real that I initially believed the book was a memoir. It begins with the main character wanting to change her name. A judge tells her that by persisting and insisting others use her preferred name, she’ll succeed in changing from being Fresno Bakersfield Ingersoll to Clare Elizabeth Ingersoll. Schultz’s mother names her children the places at which her children may have been conceived.
Here is a short excerpt from the book:
It was hard to disguise all the ways I was different from other kids. Miggie (Clare’s mother) wasn’t a parent like other parents and we didn’t live like other families. I knew things, especially about babies, things that no one else seemed to know. It made me feel different . . . and lonely. I just wanted to be like everyone else. Some of the ways I was different were obvious to me, like knowing things I wasn’t supposed to and having a horrible name, but other things, like my height, had never occurred to me until the kids in my class began calling me “shrimp.”
“Just ignore them,” said Miggie when I told her why I was crying. I knew I shouldn’t have told her. Miggie didn’t know how hard it was to be teased about things you couldn’t fix. I went to Grammie with my problem, but she said kids only called me names because they were jealous. It was the first time I’d thought that Grammie was really old and possibly crazy. There was no way anyone on the planet could be jealous of a shrimp with warts on her knees and a stupid name.
Clare and her brother live with Miggie and Grammie. Miggie has a history of moving frequently; however, she meets a stable, kind man whom she plans to marry. However, Clare cannot know if her mother’s marriage will last. For the first time, Clare stays in one place long enough to make friendships. She asks to remain at her grandmother’s when her mother moves again.
While a teen, Clare meets her natural father who deserted her in her infancy. Despite feeling anger at him, she allows him to get to know her. Additionally, Clare explores her abilities to communicate with babies while in the womb. Grammie shuts down any discussion about Clare’s abilities; but when Clare has a strong feeling about the troubled birth of her brother, Grammie tells Miggie to follow Clare’s advice.
Over the book, Clare struggles to accept her gift and to find some way to use it in her life.
Wendy Schultz is a former reporter and columnist for California’s oldest continuously operating newspaper, Mountain Democrat. Schultz earned several California Newspaper Publishers Association awards and first and second place awards for her columns. She is the author of, In the Pockets of Dreams. Her goals in life are to successfully hula-hoop, spend time on every beach in San Diego County, and publish more books.
In March 2024, River of Light received a five-star review from Readers’ Favorite in the New Adult category.
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