Gari Carter’s earliest memories consist of grownups telling family history about relatives in the Civil War. Her instructions were to learn the stories and pass them on to the next generations.
Carter graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College and studied at Johns Hopkins University, the University of Virginia, and Middlebury College, where she specialized in literature and history. She speaks English, French, Spanish, and Italian.
Carter worked for the Embassy of Bolivia and the Embassy of France in Washington DC, taught French and Spanish at all levels, and opened and ran a successful clothing and gift shop. Her life changed abruptly when she and her eleven-year-old son were hit head-on by another car in a snowstorm. Carter’s son had learned CPR just the week before in Cub Scouts, and he revived his unconscious mother as she was having a near-death experience. Her next ten years were spent in facial surgical reconstruction, using the Monroe Institute’s audio Surgical Support Series to control pain without anesthesia or medication.
Carter began writing Healing Myself after her surgeries, and found that all her earlier life enhanced her writing. For her second book, Troubled State: The Civil War Journals of Franklin Archibald Dick, she spent ten years researching the diaries of her great-great-grandfather and his firsthand account of the initial Civil War event in St. Louis. She spent another ten years doing research for The Bone Ring, which is based on writings handed down from her great-grandfather Col. William James Leonard.
Read more about Gari Carter and her books at GariCarter.com
Healing Myself
Troubled State: The Civil War Journals of Franklin Archibald Dick