You Are the Road That Led Me Home

How old photographs and letters helped me find peace with my father and write a love song

by Sandy Reay

In 2010, when Sandy wanted to promote the songs on her first CD, she found herself commuting to Phoenix to help her mother and clean out her parents home. In the process, she found about a hundred pages of her mother's family stories and about four hundred pages of letters her father wrote home from Europe during World War II.

When the smoke from a forest fire damaged her lungs and limited her energy, she used the time to turn those stories and letters into books for her family. They inspired her to write a song, You Were the Road, a song about lost love, and this non-fiction book which she calls a memoir. A Nashville music publisher advised her to make the song more positive and universal, so she wrote You Are the Road.

Sandy took a break from rewriting version 11 of this book, to learn more about writing memoirs and fiction. She hopes to have this book completed before she dies.

If you'd like to discuss memoirs or related subjects, please contact Sandy.

Check out Sandy's songs, You Were the Road, and the newer version, You Are the Road.