Rowena Sunder, still an artist in 2018, composes a meta auto-biographical book about five years of her life in New York City between 1965 and 1970. She escapes Toledo and her father’s idea that she should marry and paint on Sundays and drives away in her VW bug. She sells one painting on the way, and arrives in the big city during one of its most exciting times. She works at the (invented) Museum of Invention, sublets on E. 94th Street, makes friends, acquires a cat named Kittyhawk, and finds NYC much to her liking.

After selling paintings to a psychotherapist, he listens while she struggles with mixed feelings about focus. She finally rejoices in the swarm of ideas that come to her from everywhere. Now, a half-century later, she draws her book, and talks directly to the reader in a series of vignettes, all connected by her gift of too many ideas. Rowena loves words and puns and little jokes and these add other perspectives to every page.

Linda Campbell Franklin has written and illustrated books for McFarland, books on kitchen antiques, a series of journals for adults, and many participatory Diarygirl™ journals and scrapbooks for girls for Fine Print Publishing, such as the one on the floor on page 96! She lives in Baltimore, Maryland, and goes by the name “Barkinglips” on the web. She designed the McFarland lantern logo.

Linda Campbell Franklin
Format: softcover (9 x 6), graphic novel
Pages: 152
Bibliographic Info: index
Copyright Date: 2018
pISBN: 978-1-4766-7478-0
eISBN: 978-1-4766-3352-7
Imprint: McFarland

• “An inspiration for anyone who has ever wanted to create, writer and illustrator Linda Campbell Franklin has given us an adventurous heroine whose daily landscape is the connection between the mind and art. Life and art isn’t just observed, it is celebrated in these acts of inspiration and creation…. If you know an 18 year old or an 80 year old who is love with the creation of art, there is no better book for them to read today.”—New York Journal of Books.