Joy Pennock Gage recently published her 20th book.
Gage has been writing for around 25 years, so that’s just under one book a year, when it’s averaged out.
It’s somewhat prolific, but Gage definitely isn’t rubbing it in or anything like that.
She just wants people to write.
“Don’t wait until you have that bestseller to write, just write,” Gage said. “Everything that you write is a victory.”
Gage was a founding member of the Northern Arizona chapter of Word Weavers, a group that gets writers together to encourage the craft.
Gage’s newest book is called “For the Duration: The Changing Fortunes of War.”
It’s set in the border town of Douglas during the Second World War, an event that truly affected every corner of the country.
It’s true that Arizona wasn’t being bombed at the time, but it was part of the homefront here in America where everyone was feeling the effects of supporting the war effort.
It’s a piece of historical fiction, but Gage has quite a bit of background with telling a story about the setting.
Gage moved to Douglas in the sixth grade and graduated from the local high school in 1947.
No one in the book is based on a real person, Gage said, but the setting comes from her memories.
The story is of a girl, albeit 22 years old, who is tired of following the rules back with her family in Missouri.
Charlene Hillsdale decides to make a drastic change and head out west, taking a job as a high school teacher in the desert.
Once out in Douglas, Charlene has to learn the hard way the reality of living on her own in a world where rationing and scarcity became a reality practically overnight.
Charlene falls in love with a returning veteran, but Gage said that’s kind of something that’s happening in the background.
“I don’t really want to call it a love story,” Gage said.
Again, Gage said she draws on real life.
When Gage was going to high school, she was in class with quite a few returning veterans.
The benefits of the G.I. Bill when it came to providing higher education are known but many of those men returning from war had to come back to finish their high school education first before they could take advantage of the benefits.
Gage also remembers how lean the times were when everything from meat to rubber was rationed.
Living in Douglas, though, there was an advantage, Gage said.
People could cross the border into Mexico to get things that weren’t so restricted, things like sugar and coffee.
A Cottonwood resident for 21 years, Gage said she’s been wanting to write this book for quite some time.
It’s her fifth historical fiction novel.
Gage has written others, including one set during the American Revolution, but many of her books were religious in nature.
“My husband was in the ministry,” Gage said, adding that she’s written about parenting and women’s issues.
Gage said she wanted to tell a story about what it was like during those years of war, when pretty much everyone had to give up something to contribute to the effort.
“FDR said that we were all in it, all the way,” Gage said.
