I "escaped," as I saw it then, at age 21, newly and unsuccessfully married, leaving Salt Lake City and fleeing to Oregon. Ten years later, I divorced, went to law school, and came out as a lesbian. The thrilling, tragic, and uplifting years that followed are the subject of my next memoir, Lavender Shingle.

        My first law years were spent at the Community Law Project, a collection of radical women who looked like truckers and drove through the conservative law community at bone-chilling speed. Then, in the early 1980s, my partner, Janet A. Metcalf, and I opened the first openly LGBT law firm in Portland, OR. It became a very dynamic and unusual law firm: years later, our transgendered secretary, Paula Neilsen, became Sister Paula the Televangelist (you can see her on YouTube;) our paralegal, Jack Hogatt-St. John, played piano bar at Hobo's, a gay bar in Portland, and premiered his Biblical opera Esther at the welcoming Metropolitan Community Church; our investigator, Carole Pope, was an ex-felon who later started and ran Our New Beginnings, a half-way house for women from prison; and our beloved receptionist was Jesse Jordan, who became deeply active in the Open Adoption movement.
         But back then, at the beginning, we were all part of the struggle for gay rights, for humane treatment of AIDS patients, battling the pervasive discrimination against them, securing rare custody and visitation for LGBT parents, and fighting homophobic legislation.
        Hence the title of my second memoir: Lavender Shingle.
        Next week I will post a draft of Ch. 1 of and will serialize it, chapter by chapter,  in the weeks that follow.
        Enjoy! And remember - successful literature is 10% good writing and 90% re-writing. So I welcome all comments,  corrections, and suggestions for changes.