memoir – Andrew Careaga

Friday Five: Faith-Ann Dalton on her memoir of faith

A Q&A with the author of the raw, unflinching pro-life memoir ‘In This House We Lived’

The subtitle of Faith-Ann Dalton‘s debut book In This House We Lived–“A Faith Journey of Choosing Life Again and Again”–is more than a play on her first name. The memoir, which comes out May 8, is a raw and moving account of this first-time author’s struggles to move from a harrowing childhood through an unplanned pregnancy and many other personal trials to establish a life centered around her faith in God and herself.

Cover image of Faith-Ann Dalton’s memoir, *In This House We Lived*. Image via Anointed Colony Media.

The publisher, Anointed Colony Media, describes In This House We Lived as “a raw, redemptive memoir of trauma, crisis, faith, and the slow, intentional construction of healthy habits. “

“With unflinching honesty and hard-won clarity, Dalton traces her story of becoming a mother before she was ready, learning to choose herself without abandoning her soul, and discovering that healing doesn’t always mean getting it right—it’s about refusing to give up.”

Now a licensed cosmetologist, married, and a mother of four, Faith-Ann lives in St. James, Missouri.

Read on to learn more about Faith-Ann and her memoir. But first, please read this disclaimer:

Friday Five: ‘Our Lives in Pieces’ memoirist Tracie Adams

‘A delayed dream feels even sweeter when achieved’

In his book Second Act: What Late Bloomers Can Tell You About Success and Reinventing Your Life, Henry Oliver highlights how some of our world’s most successful people — Vera Wang, Frank Lloyd Wright, Julia Child — achieved their most notable successes later in life. This week’s featured writer, Tracie Adams, might feel at home among those late bloomers. For Tracie, that second act began last year at age 58 with the publication of her first writings in various literary magazines. Her memoir, Our Lives in Pieces: A Collection of Flash Memoir Essays, came out earlier this year and has been praised for its honest reflections on life’s joys and sorrows.

A writer since childhood (when she wrote “truly awful poems about horses and mushrooms”), Tracie spent twenty-five years teaching writing to her four homeschooled children on her family farm in Virginia along with hundreds of other homeschooled and private-schooled kids. “While teaching writing and literature was rewarding,” she writes on her website, “I have found immeasurable joy in retirement as I have finally begun publishing my creative nonfiction work in literary magazines.” And we her readers are the better for it.