Almost Home

Almost Home

Lesa Bergmann and Shellie Matheson were best friends attending junior high school in Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri from 1967 to 1968. As army brats, moving every few years, childhood friends were hard to come by. When their fathers retired from the military, Shellie moved to Springfield, Missouri, while Lesa moved to her adoptive father’s home town of Beavercreek, Ohio. As often happens when people are separated, the two girls lost touch. Fast forward fifty years to 2017. Sixty-four-year-old Shellie is fed up with the political scene. She hasn’t seen this much hatred and divisiveness in America since the 1960s. To distract her attention from news headlines and social media bickering, she begins to search in earnest for Lesa. But, instead of finding respite from hatred, Shellie comes face to face with it as she encounters remnants of Nazi Germany on her journey, stumbling onto a 35-year-old unsolved murder in the process. Aided in her quest by friends and a former lover, Shellie sacrifices her innocence to find truth and meaning in American society and her personal life.If you like Lee Child, Michael Connelly and Linda Fairstein, read Debra Walden Davis. Debra Walden Davis, the daughter of two army veterans, was born in 1953 at Ft. Lewis, Washington. She spent most of her life until the age of 15, on military bases due her father's military career. She grew up in an atmosphere of patriotism and acute awareness of international affairs as her family was directly affected by what was happening in the world. In 1966, her father was deployed to Vietnam. Her mother, brother and sister moved to Seligman, Missouri, while her father served his country. She graduated from Rogers Senior High School in Rogers, Arkansas, in 1972. From 1972 through 1976, she attended Southwest Missouri State University (today Missouri State University), earning a B.S. in Ed in Vocational Home Economics. She was awarded a MS in Ed from SMSU in Social Sciences in 1981. She attended night classes and summer school sessions to increase her areas of certification and now holds lifetime Missouri teaching certificates in four areas including Secondary Physics. She retired from teaching in 2014. Debra lives in Southwest Missouri, where she loves watching classic movies, for as Steve Martin once said, ." . . all of life's riddles are answered in the movies."