Jan Anthony
Mother Courage Press
In The Whistling Girls & Crowing Hens Series, two straight married women risk families and careers, leave society’s compulsory heterosexuality in 1972, and boldly survive in an uncharted, intimate relationship. Jan and Bea experience historic events in the women’s movement and gay/lesbian world in their 39 years together. Each book presents deeper levels on major topics and adventures.
BOOK 1 Not To Be Denied captures humorous, sad, and, scary family life between 1900 and 1970: The Depression, wars and life at home, schizophrenia; tomboy girls and teen girlfriends, sexual encounters, children, husbands, and individuals’ choices that shape them.
“Before all else, you are a wife and mother.” But Jan becomes a liberal newspaper reporter; Bea, a femme fatale. Passion explodes in their early ‘40s. Liberal religion and Transactional Analysis (TA) weekends bring them together. Their paths meld when these naïve lovers test their magnetic attraction after Jan asks, “What could it hurt if we just let it happen?”
BOOK 2 In Gullibles’ Travels, bi-sexuals now, divorced Bea tries not to be a lesbian; her lover Jan strives to keep her children, husband and Bea happy. Jan’s communication tactic helps defuse a prolonged hospital strike. She recalls living in Cold War Germany in the 1950s; touring Leningrad, Moscow and Greece with her husband. Bea and Jan escape to Europe for a rowdy and romantic three-week adventure. “A peaceful resolution to our double lives may not be possible.”
BOOK 3 In Secret Transgressions, willful Jan’s marriage turns raw. Jan’s hospital PR job expands with Bea as her associate. Jan comes ‘out’ to her trusted boss. The lovers buy their home. Trumped-up rules force Bea’s dismissal. Bea submits to a sexual encounter, loses it in Las Vegas, tries sobriety. Known now as lesbians, they are free to be themselves and create Mother Courage Bookstore. Jan is aggressively harassed to quit her hospital job but she persists and excels.
BOOK 4 "I’ll be a key to help you unlock the door to your side of that closet." In Being Mother Courage, Bea and Jan become the visibly out local lesbians with their feminist bookstore. With parents passing and ex-husbands getting the kids, Jan and Bea create women’s groups and Goddess circles. They boldly confront the loss of Jan’s cherished Door County land and her continuing job harassment despite her successes. Humorous misadventures ride with them along Door County’s precious land. Florida’s Atlantic Ocean tests their scuba-diving skills. Mexico’s road to and from Chichen Itza requires some spunk. After they get a two-page manuscript, they illustrate, design, publish and promote Something Happened to Me, their children’s sexual abuse book, which goes international and relocates their dream. Bea moves out of the confines of the local bookstore to sell their book to the world.
4 more books to come in this series!
