By Riley Fontana
Hometown Weekly Reporter
The Westwood Public Library is home to a Historic Fiction Book Club that recently invited Janis Robinson Daly to discuss her books. Her historical fiction novels “The Unlocked Path” and “The Path Beneath Her Feet” center on women in the medical field.
Needham native Daly never intended to be an author, but she fell into it doing a genealogy project on her family. She set out to learn more about her paternal grandmother and stumbled into countless stories and powerful people. “The desire to learn about my family history helped me uncover stories,” she said. She discovered her great-great-grandfather was one of the founders of the Women’s Medical College of Pennsylvania which kicked off her research and writing.
Her research led her to learn about countless influential women, whose stories she felt needed to be shared. She thought about writing biographies or historical books but found those stories had already been told, so she began to write historical fiction. Daly was able to write the story of the grandmother she never knew and incorporate all of her research this way.
Her second novel “The Path Beneath Her Feet” is a direct sequel to “The Unlocked Path” that focuses on the Appalachian region of the United States and the effects of World War II. This book contains quotes from letters Daly’s father wrote to her mother during his time in the Navy in the South Pacific. These letters were uncovered in her attic while she cleaned out her house and helped her to understand her parents relationship more.
Daly loves the Historical Fiction genre deeply and each year puts together a calendar for Woman’s History Month in March. These calendars consist of 31 books written by women that share a side of history not everyone knows. These calendars are her way of highlighting other authors and more stories about powerful women possibly lost to history.
Janis Robinson Daly was a wonderful presenter for the Historical Fiction Book Club. The audience spoke highly of her books and their excitement to read the new sequel. The Historical Fiction Book Club meets of the first Tuesday of every month at the Islington Branch of the Westwood Public Library.
