According to Jeannie, she could never have done what’s she’s done in life had she not been born in the Midwest.   The only girl in a family of three brothers, she enjoyed what she calls the typical middle class Midwestern life.  “Mother was a nurse and my dad was a business executive, so I had the best of both worlds.  Mother was extremely people-oriented and sociable, and my dad was the more thoughtful one with his head in the books and business most of the time.  I have a nice mix of both in my personality. And South Bend, Indiana was the best place to grow up,” she adds.  “I learned small town values and respect for others without a great deal of fanfare and materialism.  I’ve taken my childhood values with me everywhere I went.”   

While she enjoyed growing up in South Bend, Jeannie always wanted to see more.  She was one of the few graduates from her high school to not only leave northern Indiana to go to school, but to actually leave the state.  “It was risky, but I wanted to see the world.  At the time, South Bend was pretty much black and white.  I wanted to see what it would be like to live with people from other cultures.”  Earning a scholarship to Stanford University in California took Jeannie about as far away as she could go.  She initially began studying Anthropology, but her mother quickly advised her to be more practical.  She ended up earning a bachelor’s degree in English and was on her way. 

Jeannie ended up using her education and talent in various large high tech firms in Silicon Valley in northern California.  She always wanted to see the world, and through work spent a good deal of time in Asia and parts of Europe doing various business development functions.  “For awhile there, I was in Taiwan one out of every four weeks.  It was crazy trying to keep up and raise a house full of kids at the same time.  If it weren’t for my husband Jerry taking time off work each time and watching the kids, I wouldn’t have made it. 

After more than fifteen years in high tech, Jeannie found the computer industry changing.  She thought about sitting down to write, but never really found the time.  “Even though I had a degree in English, it never really occurred to me to be a writer until about 10 years ago.  My mother was very ill with lung cancer and bedridden, so I began to write little romantic stories for her to keep her in a positive mood.  I'd sit by her bedside each day and read her the latest little story I had written for her the night before.  One day as I was reading, she interrupted me and said "you're going to make me proud when you become a great writer one day.  It was one of the saddest things I’ve ever heard, but it gave me pause.  I decided then that it was time to begin what I should have begun twenty years earlier.” 

After her mother’s death, Jeannie found herself for the first time in her life with what could have been another tragedy.  She became a layoff victim.  She used to opportunity to begin writing, and Dark Roots was born.  “Don’t tell me people don’t wonder if they could have survived a hundred years ago, because I know we all think about it.  Heck, sometimes I wonder how my parents lived in the 50’s with segregation still going on in some parts of the country!  I wanted to address that without going down the “historic” path.  To make the suffering of that time real to people now.”