Ninety Brothers And Sisters

Ninety Brothers and Sisters

In 1978, twenty-five years ago, this story was published by Harper & Row in New York to the promise of a 21-gun salute, a writeup in the New York Times and interest by a major movie producer. Three months later the book was dead. Mysteriously it disappeared from the radar screen, and the author received warnings from two prominent religious figures. What had so angered and threatened these people, and what had been done to destroy the book? Perhaps the answer to that will never become public knowledge. But during these twenty-five years, the author has been troubled by the fact that the story she intended to tell still needed to be told. Many of the people in the story and those who blocked its telling are no longer living...perhaps this is the time to tell it. The story of "90 Brothers and Sisters" began to be written when the DePrees lived in Hong Kong, far enough away from the hills of Kentucky to finally have some perspective on the events; far enough away emotionally to tell them in a logical and perceptive way without anger and with compassion. Because many of those involved in the story were still living when Lenore began her book, she formatted it as a novel. Halfway through the writing, her father died of a massive stoke, and the editor at Harper and Row wrote to say this changed everything. The book must be taken out of novel form and written as a documentary because the story was "too unbelievable" to be a novel. Living on an ocean-going junk anchored in a typhoon shelter in Hong Kong, Lenore began to format the story. Reaching back into memories as early as two years old, she put herself into a kind of trance state, allowing her memory to recall smells and conversations and impressions vivid to a young child. Often as she typed her work the next morning before beginning a new day, she was astounded at the things she had written. Reliving those early days, she laughed aloud and was blinded by tears. All the puzzlement and wonder and horror of those me About the Author A lifetime of rich experience gives Lenore De Pree's writing texture and depth. Born in Chicago, raised in the Appalachian Mountain region of Kentucky where this story takes place, then going on with husband Gordon to spend twenty years in Hong Kong and ten years in Saudi Arabia, Lenore has looked deep into human nature, culture, and the many definitions of love. Mother of four children and grandmother of five, Lenore now lives in the mountains of North Carolina where she and Gordon own and operate an art gallery, paint, and build homes.