I recently attended a literary conference, YA By the Bay. The theme was turning readers into leaders. I shared this story with teen readers, and now I’d like to share it with you.

As a writing community, we have an obligation—to highlight the magnitude of what’s at stake when teens don’t have access to the stories they need to read.

Thank you for reading!

The summer before my senior year of high school, a series of unfortunate events left me homeless. Everything I owned filled three kitchen-sized garbage bags. I stayed with my best friend’s family for a stretch, but that wasn’t a long-term solution.

Eventually, I landed in a run-down trailer park with an abusive older man. A few months later, an at-home pregnancy test revealed I wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.

The high school I barely attended sent me to a school for pregnant teens, The guidance counselor drove me to a local college to show me what was possible. But I didn’t believe girls like me were good enough for college—you know pregnant ones that lived in trailer parks.

What happened inside the walls of the trailer where I lived no human being should have to endure. To escape my reality, I turned to fiction. Stephen King revealed things could be much worse. Danielle Steele made me yearn to be loved. Both of them gave me the courage to eventually leave.

As a poorly educated single parent of a three-year-old, I relied on public assistance to supplement my minimum-wage income. On weekends, my daughter and I stood in food stamp lines for hours beneath the grueling Florida sun. Our existence was unsustainable.

At twenty-one, and without a clue in how to navigate the system, I went back to that college. I applied for scholarships, grants, loans, and campus employment. Serendipitously, my campus job was in the library.

Because I’d missed so much of my high school education, I failed both the math and reading entrance exams. Turns out, it was a good thing. My beginning reading class teacher introduced me to Charles Dickens, Zora Neale Hurston, and John Grisham. My appetite for literature across genres exploded.

Four years later, I graduated Magna Cum Laude with a degree in elementary education. I got a job teaching second grade where my then seven-year-old daughter attended school. My favorite part of the day was the after-school book club she and I ran out of the library.

Three years later, when the librarian retired, her job became mine. I went to night school and earned my K-12 Media Certification. For ten magical years, I read Robert Muncsh, Dav Pilkey, and Patricia Polacco to hungry minds. I then matched those same hungry minds to books they could take home and share with their families.

One day I got a call that the librarian of the middle school I’d attended was retiring. As much as I loved the elementary world, I was excited start a new chapter and follow young readers to the next phase in their literary journey.

By this time, my daughter, who I named Danielle taking a piece of what saved me with us, was in college working toward a degree in British Literature. A Great Illustrated Classic version of Pride and Prejudice I’d given her as a child ignited a shared love for literature with me.

She went on to law school and is a Board Certified Elder Law Attorney. And like her mom once did, she runs a book club. She even allows me to be in it. However, each month she threatens to kick me out because I can be quite the critic!

Back in that trailer in those dark days, had I not had Stephen King to scare the hell out of me, and Danielle Steele to force me to yearn for true love, I might have stayed. Who knows what would have happened to my daughter and I living with a man who has since spent much of his life behind bars.

Books not only saved my life, they also saved hers. They made it possible for me to bring three other lovely children into the world. They made it possible for me to share my love of literature with thousands of young readers across two decades. And now they’ve brought me here as a published author and literary agent.

Books have the ability to move people in ways nothing else can. If you’re a writer, keep writing. If you’re a reader, keep reading. If you’re both, hats off, and welcome to the club!

Books open windows to the world and have the power to change lives.

Ralph Lauren