Sweet Adversity: A Southern Writer Finds Stories-and Good-in Everything

Sandra Whitten Plant has always looked around the next bend or over the next hill, occasionally getting snagged on an inconvenient fence or doused in a cold mountain stream. In the adventures of her decades-long writing career, she finds there is always a story to be told, whether affirming, informative or entertaining. She also knows that getting a good story out of a misadventure is sometimes the only comfort, lesson or hope. That curiosity-particularly about life's possibilities and what drives our points of view, actions and reactions-is what courses through this collection of stories (and the accompanying guidance). Thus, you'll find good at the heart of both the fiction and creative nonfiction tales found in Sweet Adversity. Enjoy Plant's account of two children contending with neighborhood bullies and their experience with the woman next door who shares her gloomy home with a departed husband. Likewise, read about the Vietnam War's impact on young sweethearts in the Tennessee hills and the belated happy ending of two old buddies who lived through that Cold War conflict. You'll also read about bigotry, puppy love, a beloved radio show and more. At the heart of this broad collection, you'll find encouragement, laughter, tears and the reasons the author's dad and William Shakespeare encourage us all to take lessons from Sweet Adversity.

Sandra Whitten Plant has been writing articles and stories for many years. Her favorite creative writing form is the short story, a genre that requires keen observation and economy of words. She believes that each well-written short story is like a precious jewel. She has written articles for magazines and newspapers for many years. Her work of both fiction and nonfiction has been published in anthologies, but Sweet Adversity is her first book. She has taught creative writing in schools and workshops since 1975. For the past five years, she has led a workshop called Telling Your Story in a community-based program called Joy in Learning in Nashville, Tennessee. Sandra Whitten Plant was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1941, and moved with her family to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, at the age of nine. She studied at the University of Georgia and at the University of Tennessee. She has a B.S. degree in journalism. After a thirty-four-year career in public and community relations, she retired in 2007 from Bechtel National, Inc. She is a resident of Nashville, Tennessee.