October 18 – Mary Helen Fein – Fictionalized Family History – Stitching a Life
Mary Helen Fein was born in Riverdale, New York, to a large New York family. She has a BA in English Literature from Temple University, an MS in Computer Science Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and for two years, she studied painting at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, America’s oldest art school. Today, she lives in Northern California where she writes, paints, and draws.
Mary Helen’s book,
Stitching a Life, An Immigration Story, is a historical novel based on the amazing story of her grandmother, Helen, who came to New York City from Lithuania all by herself at the age of 16, in 1900. Not just the story of her grandmother, it is the story of each one of the millions of immigrants who crossed the ocean and entered through Ellis Island to find a better life in the New World.