When Jan Karon was born in 1937, she was named for a popular novel Janice Meredith by Paul Leicester Ford. At the tender age of 10, she wrote her first novel. But she ignored her calling until 41 years later, when she finally left the security of a successful advertising career.
Writing is a way of processing our lives.
And it can be a way of healing. Her father left home when she was three, and her grandparents raised her and her younger sister on their farm. She left school after the eighth grade to enter the work force. She married young, was a mother at age 17, and became a single parent soon afterward. At 18 she took a job as a receptionist at an advertising firm, and with her characteristic determination and hard work, gradually moved up to become vice president all while raising her daughter.