When Lieutenant Henry Dornan got his orders to ship out to the European theater in the summer of ’42 his girl, Dotty, insisted they get married before he reported for duty. He was a realist and argued for waiting till his return. She was a romantic and would have none of it.

They made a trip to the Macon County Courthouse that Saturday and then moved their things into the big four square house she had inherited from her grandmother earlier that spring. They lived as man and wife for two weeks, making the most of every moment. Then he was gone.

A trip to the doctor in September confirmed she was expecting. Ever the romantic, she sent weekly letters with pictures of the pregnancy’s progress, then snapshots of their son the following April. The two years that followed were not easy, but the last two years of the war weren’t easy for anyone.

In June of ’45 she was enjoying a rare cup of rationed coffee and looking out the window of the front room of the big clapboard house when the shiny black ’42 Ford sedan pulled up and two uniformed military officers got out. She didn’t even have to read the telegram they came to deliver. She already knew. The details were irrelevant.

She offered them each a glass of lemonade which they declined. That evening she fed her son, bathed him, put him to bed and waited till he was asleep before she collapsed in a heap on the wide pine plank floor and cried until there was nothing left.

She made the best of it for another year and a half, but was determined to head west and start a new life before the boy started school. Too many memories, and yet not nearly enough. It took another six months to sell the house and everything in it. She took the proceeds from the sale, her husband’s insurance money and packed up his ’41 Chrysler Town & Country and headed west towards Bakersfield where she had relatives and the promise of a new beginning.

On the fourth day of the drive, just outside Fort Stockton, the L-head six cylinder engine of the barrel-backed beast blew. Only due to the kindness of strangers was she able to make it to town. It didn’t take long for the mechanic at Buckboard Buick to diagnose the problem. The repairs would be far more expensive than the old worn mahogany and white ash whale was worth.

Some of life’s major decisions take months or years to formulate and implement. Others, not so much.

Dotty sat at the lunch counter of the Rex Hall Drug, her young towheaded son on the stool next to her, the spitting image of the father he had never seen. Over a patty melt and fries she mapped out a series of decisions on the back of a napkin that would be a sketch of the next several decades.

She got $175 in trade for the Chrysler and paid cash for the balance on a brand new Verde Green Buick Roadmaster Sedanette, the first ’48 model in town.

She drove the sexy sedan to the Cattleman Hotel where she checked in and called the relatives in Bakersfield and told them she wasn’t coming. A week later, she bought the vacant red brick ranch home on Decatur Drive.

She’d never been to Fort Stockton before, but never left once she got there. She ordered a Smith-Corona typewriter from the Wards catalogue and began writing to help her pass the time.  First, articles for women’s magazines, then short stories. With each one the plots got better, the characters more developed and the details more defined.

The romance novels came last, but paid best.

For someone who had only known the intimate pleasures of a man for two weeks, the varied ways in which she could write about them spoke to her readers in ways other paperbacks never could.  The Ben Franklin couldn’t keep them in stock, even though they were discreetly tucked away in the corner at the back of the store.  There was a steady stream of women waiting their turn to go back and see what new titles might be available. They’d place the new one they didn’t have at the bottom of the hand basket and cover it up with sewing notions so no one saw it except Lucille at the checkout counter, who already read it by then, anyway.

Of course no one knew who was authoring them, much less that it was a woman right there in Fort Stockton.  Each romance novel had a different author on the cover, an agreement she’d reached with the publisher to keep her anonymity intact and her privacy assured. Night Story shocked the publishing world when it came out.  When her next novel, Farm Hussy hit the shelves, it outsold even the earlier story and proved she had tapped into a whole new genre the women of 1950s America were looking for.

Despite the burgeoning royalties she was raking in, she kept her three bedroom, two bath ranch home in RoadRunner Estates, shopped weekly at the Piggly Wiggly, and seemed to be no different than the rest of the community.  When Office Playgirl came out, she enrolled little Hank in Our Lady of Immeasurable Concern, paying his tuition and setting up a scholarship fund for those less fortunate with the advance she’d received for the next novel.  Tall, Blonde & Evil paid for the pool she was able to build in her backyard.  Kiss or Kill caused the biggest stir at the Ben Franklin yet, primarily due to its cover which took things to the next level.  

But it was when More Than One Way to Heaven was released that things got the most tense for Dotty.  Apparently, Brother Bob’s wife bought one of the first copies in town.  When he found it tucked behind the sack of Gold Medal Flour at the back of the pantry, there was hell to pay.  The following Saturday night at the monthly deacon’s meeting, a motion was made to boycott the Ben Franklin. It was about to pass until Mrs. Nettleberry, taking the minutes, slipped a note to Brother Bob reminding him of the PLAYBOY she found tucked into his advent calendar the previous Christmas.  A motion was quickly made to table the topic till the next meeting to allow for further study. It was never brought up again.

Dotty worried that her whole cover may be blown when Hollywood bought the rights to A Girl Called Honey and wanted her to take part in the publicity tour when the movie came out.  She had to negotiate a smaller percentage of the box office in order to avoid any public knowledge of her actual identity.  Nonetheless, she was able to go to Buckboard Buick with the proceeds from selling the rights and pay for a new ’59 Buick Electra 225 convertible. It was a shade of red as fiery as the stories she wrote, with fins that were as long as the time it took for Brother Bob’s wife to find an excuse to go to Marfa and see the movie by herself.

The beautiful 1948 Verde Green Roadmaster became Little Hank’s fabulous first car. Dotty remained an Unwilling Sinner, at least on paper. Her new Buick Electra ragtop was the hot topic of conversation all over Fort Stockton. Well , one of them.