I found Diane Holmes on a TV interview with “Hello, Iowa!” Here is a woman about my age, I thought, who’s written two books. We met in person at last year’s Indie Bookstore Day at Beaverdale Books in Des Moines, where I learned she’s a dozen years older than I am! What a remarkable woman. Her chauffeur/husband, a career fighter pilot, says she’s hard to keep up with.

Diane was raised on an Iowa farm. After high school she attended the American Institute of Business in Des Moines and married a high school classmate, Lyell, a career Marine Corps officer who flew helicopters and jets. They raised two daughters and a son while moving from state to state. Diane also worked for a large school district supervising their workers’ comp and insurance programs. She’s been through the devastating loss of an adult daughter.

You might find her books as compelling as I did. One is her memoir. The other is a novel woven out of a family mystery.

Uprooted: Family Is Where You Find It

Diane Holmes describes in her memoir, Uprooted: Family Is Where You Find It, what it’s like being born in 1932, the middle of the Great Depression. She writes about WWII through the eyes of a child helping the war efforts on the home front – victory gardens, war bonds, rationing books, and sacrificing.

Diane tells readers what she experienced in her military life being married to a career officer who flew helicopters and jet fighters and spent two tours in Vietnam. She explains how they dreaded the separations but made things work by buying two small recorders and sending tapes back and forth. She smiles and frowns, telling about raising kids moving from duty station to duty station, searching out good schools at each place. She describes going back to college to update skills then entering the workforce after nearly 25 years being away.

Holmes enjoys sharing with readers special Christmas celebrations during her lifetime. And she ends her memoir, Uprooted: Family Is Where you Find It, telling readers how she dealt with a devastating loss.

My Thoughts: This memoir, which covers the author’s life from the Great Depression and WWII until now, will especially resonate with military families. Her husband was a career Marine jet pilot, so frequent moves and separations were common, along with the sensation of being uprooted. She eventually returned to college and the workforce. Now decades later she has written two books!

Two Sisters’ Secret