BOOKS | Gail Wilson Kenna

Fiction

Wedding Night & El Amor No Correspondido & Of Love and Circumstance

Arrange Whatever Pieces Come Your Way & As Deadly as Ever

Non-Fiction

Ms. Smith Corona & Humbled by a Roach

Ink-Stained Wench & Sisyphus on Crosshills

Malay Days & Separation

One Face from the Shadow of Millions

A Woman Reader from the Boogie-Woogie West

Three Artists in Arrested Time

Thank you for your educational, provocative, and intriguing book.

Elizabeth Farnsworth, PBS

Beyond the Wall totally absorbed me. Your stories captured the feel of how bizarre and hard it is in Venezuela.

(Elisabeth Friedman, Fulbright Scholar to Venezuela, Stanford University)

Thank you so much for Beyond the Wall. The stories in it are both touching and horrifying, and I hope your book finds a wide audience.

Francis Fukuyama, Professor, George Mason U.

Congratulations on Beyond the Wall…an important addition to the drug policy reform movement.

Ethan Nadelmann, The Lindesmith Center

The Puffin Foundation is honored to have been part of your fascinating and sad expose on Venezuelan prisons.

(Gladys Miller-Rosenstein)

Your descriptions in Beyond the Wall are accurate, scary, harrowing, and moving. It's an incredible, fascinating, and well-told story.

(Richard D. Atkins, attorney at law International Recoveries)

This book displays a real flair for dialogue and deadly serious but wonderfully, witty story telling. I found the book filled with insights and independent thinking, something that is too hard to find among vote-getting politicians…

William Ratliff, Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institute

Foreign Service Journal review: Focus on Books, Beyond the Wall

This is an unusual book, one that trades polished packaging for the unvarnished truth of experience, and the power to reminds folks of what it means to be human and raise a few important, if disconcerting, policy issues to boot.

Thanks for being the passionate and persevering person you have become. Such deeds of mercy, of loving kindness in Beyond the Wall. There is so much the rest of us can learn from your life's example.

Dr. Robert Coles, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University Medical School

One summer evening long ago, the author Gail Kenna and her maternal grandmother sat before a fire in the family’s ancestral mountain cabin in Poso Park, California. Gail heard her grandmother say, “I don’t think you’ve ever read these old letters in this ledger.” Later that night in bed, Gail opened the book and was transported to 1849, traveling the Gold Rush trail with her great-great grandfather, Eugene B. Chase.

For Eugene it is a journey to adulthood, as well as to a new land. When he returns to his family in Vermont, he has earned enough money to build a house in Derby Line.

His journey begins in upstate Vermont and ends in northern California. Along the way he rides a riverboat down the Ohio River, joins a wagon train in St. Louis, endures the Santa Fe Trail, fights scurvy with Native American remedies, crosses a treacherous desert, and eventually mines for gold.

His letters home to sister Hortense, later copied into a ledger, are read 150 years later by his great-great granddaughter. The letters will change her life.

Here to There and Back Again

ISBN 978-1-7341602-2-2

A 2020 edition of Along the Gold Rush Trail (1982-2002). New version includes map of Eugene B. Chase’s journey West, gallery of 1850s travel and gold mining, and Afterword.

"A wonderful evocation of a Great American Adventure, rendered in the person of a most sympathetic hero. Compelling and dramatic, Here to There and Back Again entertains on multiple levels, and brings to life a pivotal frontier story. Highly informative, a genuine pleasure."

- Wayne Johnson, author of, among others, Don't Think Twice, Six Crooked Highways, The Devil You Know

"Gail Wilson Kenna’s book recreates the flavor of the 1849 Gold Rush by dramatizing her great-great grandfather’s letters. Ms. Kenna provides readers of all ages a primer on change, challenges met and promises kept—and how an individual’s character can be revealed through a journey. This powerful story is evocative, easy to read and understand. Ironically, with our modern travel hindered by the current virus, the story seems even more insightful."

- Keith Kehlbeck, writer, historian, and author of Gone to God: A Civil War Family’s Ultimate Sacrifice

The Story of a Contrary, Contumacious Cat

ISBN 978-1-7341602-0-8

In a dual-military household, a contrary Persian cat keeps pooping on a major's valued rug. Four lively female characters resolve a problem related to moving stress. Glossary includes thirty words, playfully presented. Charming artwork by A. Cort Sinnes.

“Your story is charming, hilarious, and wonderfully sensitive. I laughed out loud while reading passages to my husband, who had a similarly fraught relationship with his daughter’s cat.”

- Carole Harlow, ESL, Adult literacy teacher

The Face of the Avila

Second edition ISBN 980-07-2564-4

“I identified with so much, not only about Venezuelan culture shock in all its manifestations, but also in respect to friendship and the various women’s themes that permeate the letters of Iris and Jessica. After finishing the book, I felt as though I’d had a good, long talk with friends.”

- Elisabeth Friedman

Stanford University, Fulbright scholar

"When I read The Face of the Avila, I laughed and remembered those times I was bewildered, confused, and plainly lost in another country. This book is a 'must read' for newcomers to foreign countries because it tells the reader, "You are not alone. We have all been there, and in time you will enjoy your life overseas."

- Ileana Puig, Community Liaison Officer (CLO),

U.S. Embassy, Lima, Peru

His journey begins in upstate Vermont and ends in northern California. Along the way he rides a riverboat down the Ohio River, joins a wagon train in St. Louis, endures the Santa Fe Trail, fights scurvy with Native American remedies, crosses a treacherous desert, and eventually mines for gold.

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