"... Frank was released from the hospital (I am sure the nursing staff worked overtime to make him well as he is not the most complacent patient), but he is still very weak. It will just take time to rebuild his stamina. He is hoping to feel well enough to attend his class luncheon on the 15th. He was a very sick fellow, but is on the road to recovery.
Again, thank you so much for your thoughts and prayers.
Shirley*
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Mr.Gil Ballance's excellent book, Leah's Journey Home, got a big boost from one of North Carolina's most celebrated academics. The endorsement reads as follows:
"When young, unwed mother-to-be Leah embarks on a May-December arranged marriage with a Civil War veteran thirty years her senior, moving to his circa-1900 farm hard by the Great Dismal Swamp, she does so with the determined soul of a schoolteacher and suffragette.Gil Ballance's social drama, modeled in part on his own family's history, his precise, good-hearted and uplifting novel is a welcome addition to the literature of Eastern North Carolina."
-Bland Simpson, Kenan Distinguished Professor of English and Creative Writing Co-Director of the Thomas Wolfe Scholarship, UNC Chapel Hill
Our 92 year old English teacher and founder of one of the first Radio Production Departments in the North Carolina public school system has begun his new career as an author with a "bang!"
-Ed
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