"Digger's Izy"

Until recently, local writer Nancy Weston has enjoyed a long career in professional management, from the aerospace industry to the medical device field. She helped craft processes to more effectively respond to crises, such as Butte County's 2008 fires.

Now, with her debut novel, Weston has turned her attention to a different kind of crisis, where a family must face the reality of a dad who is intellectually brilliant but also mentally ill. "Digger's Izy" ($14.95 in paperback from Weston Writes; also for Amazon Kindle) follows Isabella ("Izy") Reinhardt, born in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, "just at the dawn of madness."

Grandy, Izy's maternal grandmother, "was like a great oak tree, anchoring the land around it with roots, protecting with shade and shelter." Being around Grandy, who hailed from Scotland, was an opening into a rich family history and wise words Izy would never forget.

Izy's father, Gunter, had German roots. On good days he tutored his daughter and when she was eight brought home a model railroad kit. But there was little expression of love; on the contrary, Gunter found his daughter lacking in every way, telling his wife, Missy, "She eats like a pig. She is a pig. A brown-eyed pig!" 

Though she tries to be a peacemaker, Izy finds herself, as the years slip by, joining disruptors at school. It is a time of racial conflict, assassinations, Cold War tensions, hostage taking, Watergate, the war in Vietnam, and the novel interweaves news of the day with the personal challenges Izy faces as she realizes her father is not just demanding, but dangerous.

Rejecting her mother's faith in God, Izy is nevertheless haunted by questions of meaning. This coming-of-age story follow's Izy's surprising rise as a scientist, her fight against discrimination, her father's sacrificial contribution to brain research. "My whole life has been about my father," Izy says. "He has been the single most overwhelming aspect of my life: A great light, warming me, blinding me, burning me, but always shining ahead to show me the way."

This first novel heralds the advent of a new talent and a new way for the author to make a difference in the world.