RISON - Local author Tommye Staley will visit the Cleveland County Library Saturday, Aug. 24 at 10 a.m. to sign copies of her new book “Washing Worms: Memories of a Southern Girl.”Staley, a former resident of Palmyra in Lincoln County, has many relatives still in Cleveland County.Staley has been a wife, mother, and school teacher for over fifty years. In 2022 she penned her first ever screenplay which she and and her husband produced into a motion picture, “Christmas Journey.” She also authored several one-act plays during her time in the Delaware theater scene. She has a M.S. in Biology from Louisiana University at Monroe and additional post graduate studies. She taught high school anatomy and biology for 34 years and forensics in college. She has lived in Arkansas, Texas, Hawaii, and Delaware, and retired happily with her husband to Mesa, Arizona. She has two beautiful daughters, Michele Kish in Delaware, and Georgiana Staley-Ford, in Pennsylvania.“Washing Worms” is the story of her beginning on an isolated Arkansas farm in 1942. It follows her through wonderful and tragic times, as she forms relationships with both people and animals, learning how to live her life. Joe, Lou, and the other people on the island, try to teach her how to avoid being sent to reform school at the tender age of four! She truly fears nothing and is very adventurous in her passion for learning about living life. Joe told her that she didn’t have to wash the worms, the fish didn’t mind eating dirty worms. These ‘life lessons’ learned from Joe, and others, almost prepared her for the time her idyllic life was snatched away from her, or better said, her from it....
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