Monica is an artist, art therapist, author and teacher. After a few years working in TV production she left the bright lights of New York City and returned home to Chicago to follow new dreams. Along the way there were countless jobs as a temp secretary to pay the bills as she pursued a freelance art career. After fulfilling her biggest dream – becoming a mother – she went on to become an art therapist, author and art teacher. In her role as an art therapist she has worked with pre-school, elementary and high school students.
She is also in the process of pitching her feature film script based on her historical novel, Rose’s Ring: Inheritors of Silence and Secrets, and you can read all about it by pressing Enter above. In May the script won Best Historical Drama at the Cambridge Script Festival!Rose’s Ring: Inheritors of Silence and Secrets
- Category: Creative Works
An historical novel, based on true facts, Rose’s Ring is the story of Rose Donovan, a TV reporter from Chicago, always on the lookout for a great story, and a great love. She has no idea that both are already in her own backyard; or at least nearby.
Rose feels she is going nowhere fast. After the death of her mother, she inherits a ring and a diary. Traveling to Ireland and with the help of a psychic she is taken back in time to the years of the Great Hunger and the story of her ancestors, Rose Ryan and James Kilroy. Living through the harrowing and tragic events of those years, they are torn apart by events beyond their control.
Fleeing starvation, tyranny and oppression in their native land they are reunited in America only to find similar horrors being forced upon the Native population and the African slaves. Interwoven in her own family story is the plight of a group of Native Oneida people on a forced march to treatied lands in Wisconsin and of Joshua Glover, a runaway slave, whose decision to stop running sets in motion events that culminate in one of the worst shipwrecks in Lake Michigan maritime history, the sinking of The Lady Elgin.
The family ring was recovered, but the story was not until Rose Donovan’s journey enables her to not only bring the story of the ring back to the family, but also empowers her to follow her own dream, a powerful gift from her ancestors.