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From the author of Walking Home: Trail Stories, Celia Ryker's Augusta is gripping historical fiction based on the true, against-the-odds story of her grandmother, a woman who fled the hardships of the Ozarks at the turn of the 20th century for a new city, and a chance at a better life. She had to confront the kind of poverty that you can almost smell, the kind that is in the background of the Neapolitan novels by Elena Ferrante and The Grapes of Wrath.

"Smooth-flowing prose carries the tale forward at a steady pace … farm and city vignettes create vivid images of time, place, and economic class, and Augusta emerges as a formidable woman in the face of daunting odds,” says Kirkus Reviews, calling the book “a historically evocative period drama that's poignant and disquieting."

Celia has kept journals and written short stories and poems all of her life. She has written articles for newsletters, local newspapers and The Vermont League of Writers. She published her first book, Walking Home: Trail Stories, at the age of 71 and her first novel, Augusta, at 73. Her upcoming book. Big Guy, is a middle-grade children’s book.