Plant My Feet On Higher Ground

About the Book

I heard many stories about the Galveston Flood when I was a child, although I then grasped none of its tragedy. I realized what an impact the storm had left with my mother and her family, so I decided in the fall of 1979 to write this story beginning with that Galveston Hurricane.

The setting would move from Galveston City and East Texas to where my mother's family had migrated to New Mexico Territory to homestead a farm in 1906. I knew what the flat plains country of eastern New Mexico was like, for I was born in Clovis, ten miles west of the Texas border, and lived the first eighteen years of my life in Curry County.

About the Author

Ila's freelance newspaper and magazine feature articles were printed in San Diego city and County area periodicals in the 1970's during a break between state and parochial school teaching jobs. As a single mother following a divorce in 1970, she joined the National Federation of Press Women, entered NFPW's annual contest, won first place for a short story in California. It went on to the National Competition and placed second. Until this book that was her only published work of fiction. She has moved back to her hometown of Clovis, which also happens to be the setting for the conclusion of this book.