Judy McConnell discusses "A Penny A Kiss: Memoir of a Minnesota Girl in the Forties and Fifties"

A young southern family moves from the hills of small-town West Virginia to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1939 and enters a new social stratum.

After struggling to fit into a private girl's high school, daughter Judy attends a western college, where she suffers staggering defeat and enters a relationship that sets her on a singular path. Striving to carve out her identity within the rigid moral codes of the conventional Forties and Fifties, she defiantly pushes the front edge of the emerging hippy protest movements. The demands of academia, isolation, and personal relationships teach her that there's a price to pay for freedom.

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Judy McConnell was born in Charleston, West Virginia and moved to Minnesota with her family in 1939. She became interested in writing at an early age, but didn't get around to writing a book until age 73. After graduating in Comparative Literature from the University of Southern California, she traveled and lived on the coasts for a while before marrying and taking up careers as a teacher, training specialist, and documentation writer. Divorced, she lives in active retirement in St. Louis Park and is the proud parent of two and grandparent of five.