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Meet Me at the Corner
A former newspaper reporter who has lived in Franklin for nearly 40 years, Marjorie is active in several Franklin and Hales Corners organizations.
A Good Read by Good Drive Press: Meet Nancy!
By Marjorie Pagel
Tuesday, Apr 29 2008, 09:41 AM
Nancy Goodman Driver is a teacher in Franklin schools. She is also a published writer. On Saturday, May 3, she will be reading from her newest book, Coast to Coast: Arrivals and Departures, at the Franklin Public Library.
The reading will begin at 2:30 p.m. Everyone is welcome.
I met Nancy last week when she was reading from her first book, Beverly Arlene: Saving the Stories. This memoir of her mother had the audience laughing one moment and dabbing at their eyes the next.
Coast to Coast was published this year by her own publishing company, Good Drive Press. The name, a derivative of her own, is also an appropriate catchword for the content. As a child, she and her family took many road trips together, and her subsequent travels have taken her all over the United States and abroad.
Nancy won my admiration in Beverly Arlene as she recounted the travels through England and Scotland the two of them took together. Nancy’s mother was in a wheelchair then, but Nancy was determined that her mother, a lifetime “Anglophile,” should have a chance to see the places she had only read about. There were many challenges along the way, some exasperation – and lots of laughs.
At the reading last week Diana Burns, of Greendale, read the part of Beverly Arlene. Diana and Nancy were colleagues at Franklin High School. Nancy teaches English as a Second Language at the high school and middle school. She does most of her writing in the summer.
Nancy divides her new book, Coast to Coast, into three sections: vignettes, short fiction and essays. The first section is part of a longer work on travel, written with the support of the Wisconsin Arts Board when Nancy lived in Door County. Most of the stories in the second section are set in Door County though some were written in the 80s, while she was living in Spain. The third section, about life in Barcelona, was written to accompany a friend’s photographs.
Nancy spent many hours this past summer editing her work, culled from 25 years of writing. "Writing is 99 percent revision and 1 percent inspiration," she told Molly Snyder Edler, of OnMilwaukee.com, in an interviewed published April 20. (See www.onmilwaukee.com/ent/articles/goodmandriverarticle.html)
Nancy’s brother Steve helped create the cover, using old slides from their father’s collection of a trip to California in the 60s. She calls it, “The Goodman kids on the road.” For every book she sells, Nancy is donating $3 to the Next Door Foundation. (See http://www.nextdoormil.org). She believes every child deserves to grow up in the presence of good books, both at home and school.
According to the Edler article, Nancy plans to write two more books. A possible title for one (her reflections on growing older) is Bits and Pieces; the other will be about teachers and students who have inspired her, Learning to Teach and Teaching to Learn.For more information about her writing, contact Nancy at gooddrive@sbcglobal.net. (Telephone: 414-372-0109) She is available for readings, workshops and book club presentations.
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