The Story of Open Arms: Community-Powered Compassionate Care
Mary’s newest work will be published in the spring of 2028 in celebration of the 15th anniversary of Open Arms Free Clinic, Elkhorn, Wisconsin, Walworth County’s first and only free clinic serving the working poor and uninsured of this county of 100,000+. The Clinic provides medical, dental and behavioral health and medications free of charge to more than 2000 patients annually. The Clinic was founded on the inspiration of Fr. Dan J. Sanders; early organizers and funds were raised by the tireless Judy Johnson (also know as the Cinic’s matriarch) and became a national model for compassionate and integratied care under the leadership of its first and only Executive Director, Sara Nichols. Containing more than a hundred pictures and short profiles of sixty volunteers who made this miracle happen it will be of interest not just to Walworth County residents, but to healthcare workers everywhere, and to volunteers with their own vision of how to meet needs in their communities.
A sailing adventure with six teenage girls helps the captain come to terms with her childlessness.
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A woman obituary writer considers adoption and discovers her Irish mother’s secrets.
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Three women take a mid-life sabbatical and get drawn into a community’s denial of its drug and alcohol problem.
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A bone marrow transplant changes the lives of a woman, her donor-brother and their mother, who slips into dementia while her son cons her out of her money.
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Flora Bradley, a legal aid attorney, survives a horrific fire and receives a multi-million dollar settlement. A modest person, she doesn’t know what to do with her new found wealth, but many around her, including her troubled brother Matt, have plenty of ideas. Flora wants her money to “help,” but there’s no helping those who won’t help themselves.
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Three interwoven stories: A mother gives birth in 1960 to a thalidomide baby and must overcome her perfectionism to accept her deformed child, discovering the “feminine mystique” and early feminism along the way. Her second daughter, born perfect, struggles to live up to that perfection as a television news reporter. The first born, bright, energetic and optimistic, becomes a lawyer and must cope with her mother’s Alzheimer’s, her sister’s addictions, and her own quest for motherly love.
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A Christian legal psychodrama! (More will be revealed!)