Now available: Hitchin’ to Maine
Wheelchair-bound Annie longs to return to Maine to be with her beloved great-aunt Dody near the ocean once again. Trapped in Minnesota for decades with health, marriage, and financial problems, her feisty courage leads her to hitchhike cross-country with truckers. She does so in her Ultra Lite wheelchair. Her drivers range from nice to quirky to nasty, some with canine copilots, in big rigs, pickup, and a box truck. What she finds when she gets to Maine is not what she was expecting. Come along with Annie on a cross-country ride of a lifetime and discover what happens on Kettle Island, off the coast of Maine by Stouts Harbor.
About Grace Keddy Reed
Grace Keddy Reed used to be Grace Katherine Von Tobel. As a card-carrying feminist, she shocked herself by choosing to take her husband’s surname. They met during COVID when she was a never-married, childless, independent 75-year-old woman. Her 71-year-old husband-to-be, Ken Reed, was a widower and well worth waiting for. Now at 80, Grace has found the time to finish a book she started years ago. Ken graciously provided the support, time, and space for her to write. For many reasons, Grace and Ken know they found in each other the loves of their lives.
When changing her last name, Grace chose to swap out her given middle name as well for her favorite nickname, by which many still know her: Keddy.
She lives with Ken, and their two dogs: Schatzi the Havanese and Roscoe the hound, splitting their time between Winslow, Maine, in summer and Casa Grande, Arizona, in the winter.
Grace has been collecting characters to write about throughout her life. She met them when she was a college teacher in Maine and Minnesota, a substitute teacher in grades 2–12 in Maine, self-employed seamstress in Northfield, Minnesota, a resort manager in Oquossoc, Maine, manager of a small publishing house in Auburn, Maine, a cook at a remote hunting camp in northwestern Maine, proprietor of Aardvark Alley (selling African crafts to support an orphanage she visited periodically in Kenya), manager of a thrift store and work therapy program for a halfway house in Miami, Florida, a self-employed craftswoman as a hippie in Colville, Washington, and as an administrative assistant at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.