“I just finished your book, "Shannon" and I really enjoyed it. It was a good and important story. There were several parts of it that I especially related to.”

Berkeley. My parents and my husband both graduated from there, and since I grew up in Los Altos, I often went there for my cello lessons. It was fun to recognize the buildings and the layout in your story.

Long distance relationships. Mike and I fell in love when he was a junior in college and I was a senior in high school. We were apart for most of 3 years before we got married. I related very much to some of Shannon's feelings and experiences.

Archeology. Before Mike and I were married, we worked for 2 summers at Hell Gap, a paleo-indian excavation in Wyoming. The dig was run by the Peabody Museum. I related to the excitement of discovery, as well as the heat, the dirt, and the lack of hot showers! How do you know so much about archeology?

War time relationships. My parents were students at UC Berkeley when WWII broke out. My mother told me a lot about when they fell in love, their fear of the draft, their decision to get married while they could, and then, after just 3 months of marriage, my father left for the war, and they didn't see each other for 18 months. I still have the letters they sent to each other. When I was a teenager, my mother cried when she showed them to me. Walking through that process with Shannon and Matt made me understand better what my parents went through.

Damaged veterans. This is something many people choose to ignore. You portrayed it with power and compassion.

Communication. I was particularly struck by how difficult it was to get information from  libraries and museums, and how much effort it took to travel from one place to another. We really take both of those things for granted now, don't we. Shannon's epic trip to find Matt after the war was exciting and gripping. I couldn't put the book down. And how do you know so much about Hawai'i? You clearly did a huge amount of research for this book, as well as taking the time and effort to actually write it. BRAVA!

— Sherill Roberts