A Song of Four Marías

A riveting, raw, painfully honest coming-of-age story told by four Latina BFFs. The story brings to life their struggles with devastating secrets nobody talks about, toxic masculinity, forbidden love and loss, faith in crisis. Cultural expectations sizzle against the unforgiving truths of immigrant life in Stockton, California in the 1960s. Can their friendship endure? Can the four Marías each survive? If only…they had shared their secrets in time.

Adele Nova O'Neill was born in 1944 in Washington and raised in California by parents who were both teachers. With no TV in the house, they were a family of bookworms and travelers. They spent time camping, hiking, backpacking, and skiing in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California and the Canadian Rockies. When she was 14 the family spent a year traveling in Europe living in a VW camper. By the time she went to college, she was infected with the family passion for nature, literature, art, and travel. She earned a triple minor in History, Literature, and Art History from San Diego State University, then a teaching credential, and a Master's Degree in Secondary Education. She taught Art, Art History, English and Psychology in high school and Art History in community college for 20 years. Now retired, with her five children grown, she enjoys spending time with family, writing, painting, photography and traveling widely on every continent. Adele O'Neill and her husband David Carpenter, after they retired from teaching in 2008, took over management of the family press. The name has changed from Albicaulis Press to Great Owl Press. Under a second imprint, Little Owl Books, they are bringing out a series of children's books, several in Spanish and English for easy learning for young children. After her father died in 2011, Adele and her Mother spent much of the year traveling the world, writing, painting and taking photographs together. Adele has followed in her Mother's footsteps and taken up the family passion for writing and illustrating. Elizabeth died in 2020, and Adele continues the task of finishing the writing projects she and her mother were in the midst of.

Elizabeth Stone O'Neill (1923 - 2020) Born in Portland, Oregon, Elizabeth spent most of her childhood in the northwest. Early in life she developed a passion for nature, literature, art, languages, and travel-a passion she never lost. She was multi-lingual and traveled throughout the world, exploring over 150 countries.Elizabeth was a poet, illustrator, novelist, traveler, historian, and nature writer. She lived in California, and backpacked, skied, hiked, botanized, and bird-watched in California's High Sierra, the cascades, Canadian Rockies, Norway, Spain, the Alpes, Dolomites in Italy, Alaska, Mexico, and the Andes. But the mountain range she loved the best was the California Sierra. In 1941, she attended Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland where she met and the next year married John Carroll O'Neill (1916 - 2011). They had two daughters, six grandchildren, and fourteen great-grandchildren.She wrote extensively about mountain subjects and nature in periodicals and her books, Meadow in the Sky, Mountain Sage, and Tioga Tramps-the last in collaboration with her husband whose photographs grace many of her pages.Elizabeth graduated from University of the Pacific in Stockton, California, where she majored in French, earned a teaching credential, and a Master's degree in Inter-American Studies with a major in History. She taught every grade from kindergarten through sixth in South Stockton for 30 years. During the summers and on occasional sabbatical leaves, she had time for roaming the world.A lifelong traveler, she wrote and illustrated a variety oftravel articles. In 1953 Elizabeth was a finalist for the Yale Younger Poets Prize, one of the most prestigious competitions in the world of poetry. Her poetry has been published in numerous periodicals and in her book, Leaky Borders. She also wrote and illustrated children's books, and her press, formerly Albicaulis Press, renamed Great Owl Press, is now managed by her daughter and son-in-law, Adele Nova O'Neill and David A Carpenter. Her daughter joined her in illustrating, writing, editing, and supervised translations into several foreign languages. Unfortunately, at the time of her death, she and Adele were in the process of writing three books which Adele is now finishing.