About the Author              
Deanna O’Daniel considers herself fortunate to have grown up after World War II, during America’s greatest period of prosperity for the middle class. After the war, many rural families migrated from farm to city life because jobs were plentiful. O’Daniel’s father, desired to have it both ways: a steady job and life on a farm on the edge of the city of Louisville, Kentucky. Here, he could feed his large family and have a secure income. This made for a busy life for his children, particularly, Deanna, as the oldest child. Much of her first book, “Kiss Your Elbow – A Kentucky Memoir,” was written to show the job of the ‘oldest’ daughter.’ This role required her to be able to take her mother’s place in any emergency – like what happened when Deanna was 12 and Mother went to the hospital for two weeks!
All three of Deanna’s books were written from the life viewpoint of women born during the time period of 1939-1945 - between the Depression and the end of WWII. This was a small, ‘bridge-over,’ generation, but an important one.  Also significant for the Silent Generation woman, was the fact that they were raised to be demure, obedient and ‘born to please.’ This congenial demeanor became a problem for them in the 1960’s and beyond. Deanna’s belief is that your life is defined by your birth era. The next important timing brought on the emergence of the huge “Baby Boomer Generation,” that followed.  Because Deanna’s adult life was shaped by America’s desperate need for classroom teachers, she was able to get an “Emergency Teaching Certificate,” and have free college.
“Read the stories as though they were your own life,” Deanna tells other Silent Generation women, as she takes them down through the decades of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and beyond. Her writing is both nostalgic and humorous, guaranteed to raise a memory. “Having a sense of humor lightens any load,” she says.
Deanna’s second book, “Changing the Sheets – A Kentucky Memoir,” tells how the Silent Generation women were forced to alter their personalities from the sweet, lovely housewives their parents had trained them to be, in order to handle the loud, unruly Boomer Generation born after them. The wild, riotous 1960-70s, with ‘The Pill’ and Woman’s Liberation, allowed the sexual revolution to begin and women’s lives changed forever! Deanna recalls how these upsetting times of changing role models and shifting values, affected her marriage to the man, she had formerly called, “the man of her dreams.” Like so many marriages of the period, hers also fell into divorce.
The third book in her Trilogy, “Opening a New Window – A Kentucky Memoir,” tells of life for her generation after divorce in the 1980’s and beyond.  The TV shows told Deanna that women had won their rights during the Woman’s Movement. For a small while in the late 1970’s, it seemed as though that were  true. However, being a single woman/mother, with the few inner skills she had of knowing how to stand up for herself, gave her many adventures – some pretty risky. But, like so many spunky woman of her generation, she made it!
Deanna O’Daniel, Ph.D, is a poet, author, Grandmother and mother of two, She grew up on a farm in the suburbs of Louisville, Kentucky during the 1940s and `50s.  A thirty year retiree from classroom teaching, she runs a self-help company called, “SelfSeek Hypnosis,” that she started in 1995. 
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