The Early Years A Memoir

Rachel G. Carrington was born into a family as the first child of eleven children. She was born during the Great Depression, a time that found poverty rampant in many middle-class American families who were unaccustomed to doing without. Her parents' chief desire was to see their children with good educations in K-12; beyond that, further education was not realistic. A promise of a scholarship for Rachel made her desire of attending a teachers' college seem attainable. It was not to be, as told in her life story. Even so, her strong desire to learn, instilled by her father, caused her to seek to educate herself through any means possible. In her growing-up years, self-help education programs were not easy to find. She discovered, however, that by contacting local and state government officials, she could find materials to help her in her desire to learn. Many long hours of writing letters and scanning informational pamphlets that she had received helped her further her learning. She wanted to be an English teacher, should she have attended college, so her information requests centered on grammar and punctuation guidelines.The knowledge gained through this self-help program she had managed to obtain stood her in good stead to gain her the confidence to try what she always wanted to do-write a book about her life. She once described this life as one so fulfilled that on looking back, I can see very little that I would ever want to change.The Early Years is her first book.