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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Julia Brewer Daily is a Texan with a Southern
accent. She holds a B.S. in English and a M.S. degree in Education from
the University of Southern Mississippi.
She has been a communications
adjunct professor at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi, and
public relations director of the Mississippi Department of Education and
Millsaps College, a liberal arts college in Jackson.
She was the founding director of the Greater Belhaven Market, a
producers’ only market in a historic neighborhood in Jackson, and even
shadowed Martha Stewart.
As the Executive Director of the Craftsmen’s
Guild of Mississippi (300 artisans from 19 states) which operates the
Mississippi Craft Center, she wrote their stories to introduce them to
the public.
She is a member of the Writers’ League of Texas, the Women Fiction
Writers’ Association, the San Antonio Writers’ Guild and the Women’s
National Book Association.
Daily is an adopted child from a maternity home hospital in New
Orleans.
She searched and found her birth mother and through a DNA test,
her birth father’s family, as well.
A lifelong Southerner, she now
resides on a ranch in Fredericksburg, Texas, with her husband, Emmerson,
and Labrador retrievers, Memphis Belle and Texas Star. For more on
Julia, visit her website juliadaily.com.
FOLLOW JULIA BREWER DAILY ON SOCIAL MEDIA:
Facebook: @JuliaDailyAuthor
Twitter: @JBDailyAuthor
Instagram: @JuliaDailyAuthor
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AN INTERVIEW WITH JULIA BREWER DAILY:
1. What are you writing next?
My second novel launches Nov. 1,
2022. It is a modern western with an ancient secret. I began a podcast
called Authors Over 50 to celebrate those of us who wrote our first book
after the age of 50. It has become quite popular among the crowd
writing in Life’s Sweetest Third!
2. Your second book, “The Fifth Daughter of Thorn Ranch,” is a little different from your first book. What inspired the story?
When we moved to Texas, I became
enamored with Texas ranches, especially those held in the same family
for multiple generations. We visited Mesa Verde National Park in
Colorado, and when I saw the magnificent ruins left there by ancient
people, I had the idea for my second novel. If you owned a million
acres, you would not know all sections of the property, so my book is
about the heiress to the largest ranch in Texas who finds an ancient
people living on her property.
3. What kind of research did you do to help write your recent book?
Visiting the ruins in Colorado
helped, and I had sensitivity readers guide me about indigenous people,
their customs and how to avoid stereotypes. I toured the largest ranch
in Texas, as well, to get a feel for the south Texas landscape and the
same family who has owned it since the 1800s.
4. You have a uniquely personal connection to the story in “No
Names to Be Given.” Can you explain the inspiration behind the book?
I am an adopted child from a
maternity home hospital in New Orleans. This debut novel has the same
memoir thread running through it with three protagonists who meet at a
maternity home in New Orleans to relinquish their babies for adoption
and return home as if nothing transpired. Twenty-five years later, they
are brought back together with a blackmailer threatening to expose their
secrets — all the way to the White House. Their adopted children are
featured in the novel, as well, and one of them mirrors my own life. DNA
results are used in “No Names to Be Given” to find an adopted child,
just as I found my birth father’s family through DNA results. Although
there was no blackmail in my own life, many birth mothers I researched
were threatened with their secrets of becoming pregnant before marriage
and giving their children for adoption.
5. Though “No Names to Be Given” is a novel, the reality of
maternity homes in the early to mid-1900s is well-documented. How did
you balance the fact from the fiction?
Societal mores in the 1960s forced
unwed pregnant women to relinquish their babies for adoption. Adoption
is a two-sided coin — heartbreak and loss for the birth mother, joy, and
elation for the adoptive parent. It is a subject that has not been
fully explored in books and film. One hundred million people in the U.S.
have adoption in their immediate families. Although “No Names to Be
Given” is a fictional account, it
is based on many true stories and sparks conversations about adoptive
parents, birth mothers, adopted children and the life-long impact on all
three groups.
6. The main characters in “No Names to Be Given” – Becca, Faith
and Sandy – are complex and incredibly different. How did you go about
developing each woman so they were unique yet still harmonious as a
trio?
I wanted readers to recognize that
women from all soci0-economic backgrounds experienced the same social
and family pressures to relinquish their babies for adoption. So, in
that aspect they were very much alike. Each of the women in “No Names to
Be Given” transform from being fearful and controlled to being strong
women who survived a traumatic experience and moved past it. They had
false beliefs that they were not worthy and would not be able to handle
the scars and wounds in their psyches, but they developed into
impressive women, in spite of the trauma.
7. While there is less stigma around unwed mothers today, there’s
still a large focus on women’s reproductive rights. What are some
differences you see today? Some similarities?
Because the book is set in the 1960s
during a time when pregnant women were expected to give up children out
of wedlock, I think young women today will learn about a time of which
they know little. Perhaps the lesson for us is to learn from history and
not repeat our mistakes, mainly the shame inflicted on young women who
were forced to give up their babies. The struggles continue today with
laws instructing women what they can and must do with their own bodies.
Interestingly, we do not see those same levels of requirements for men.
8. What do you hope readers gain from “No Names to Be Given”?
Forty years ago, when I had the idea
for this book, there were few stories about adoption. Today, that is no
longer the case. However, I lived the adoption story and can give
glimpses into all aspects, from the birth mothers, adopted children and
adoptive parents’ points of view. It is a story that sparks a discussion
about the complex topic of adoption and the ramifications that existed
then and today.
