“After completing active practice, Mom asked me to get her book published. That got complicated. Once I’d gotten into the weeds of it, I asked several older and younger, talented, accomplished cousins to help me. Together, Mom’s tome was completed.

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At an early point growing up, I realized that every one of my aunts and uncles loved me, that they were simply good, religious people, clearly irrespective of their modest means. Completing their lives in story was a labor of love. I also changed from believing that Grandma was for cookies and getting away with things, to trying to be like the example that Grandma set.

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The heart and soul of what Mom wrote about surprised me: universal meanings that transcend the Allen family, the wisdom to be shared from experiencing life’s adversities, the dry and humorous wit dropped somewhere in a sentence or the start of another, and the subtleties threading the text together from beginning to end.”