Joy Neal Kidney

Joy Neal Kidney is the oldest granddaughter of Leora Wilson, who lost three sons during WWII and was widowed, all during a three-year period. Through the decades, Joy helped take Memorial Day bouquets to the graves of those three young uncles, not knowing that only one of them is buried there--until decades later, after the death of her courageous little Grandma Leora. Joy became a writer in order to tell her stories.  She and her husband, Guy (an Air Force Veteran of the Vietnam War and retired Air Traffic Controller) live in central Iowa. Their son is married and they live out-of-state with a small daughter named Kate. A graduate of the University of Northern Iowa, Joy has lived with fibromyalgia for two dozen years, giving her plenty of home-bound days to write blog posts and books, working with research from decades earlier. All of the "Leora books" tell stories about world and national events reaching into the American Heartland--westward expansion, two world wars, pandemics, how mental health issues were handled, the Great Depression, and surviving great personal losses. But they are hopeful as well. Please visit her website at http://joynealkidney.com