The Oath of the Secret Pearl

About the Book

 Illegitimacy in the turn of the 20^th Century could play havoc with careers

and aspirations.  A medical doctor’s family is faced with the news their first grandchild’s future untimely birth can disrupt their plans for a family clinic in their small town in the state of South Dakota. They devise a plan for involved members of the two families to take an oath of secrecy for the rest of their lives to protect both families from the disgrace of malicious gossip.

      World War One disrupts plans of the fateful couple to marry after they both

graduate from college.  The plot is

interwoven with irony and heart shattering

events for which the Oath constrains each member from seeking solace outside

the Circle of the Secret Pearl.

A tantalizing series of events brings an unexpected discovery of the sheltered secret to the Circle of the Secret Pearl. 

About the Author

                                                        About the Author

                  Lois Swanson is a graduate of 

             South Dakota State University, with

a B.S. degree.  She wrote and illustrated “Colorifics Reader Stories”, a compilation of 33 children’s stories. Each story is a little book, an adjunct

to the remedial reading program Phonologics  by Teri Swanson PhD, that combines whole language reading with phonics.  Some of the characters

of the little books are in her 212 page YA mystery Day of the Whistler that

picks up where the little books leave off, and continues to stress building vocabulary.  Lois Swanson was also commissioned to write a teaching

manual:  Grammarcy:  Teaching Sentence and Paragraph Construction

with an accompanying student workbook.

Married for over 60 years, she and her physicist husband raised

three children and have three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

After her husband’s retirement, they traveled widely.  They both enrolled

in a creative writing class and helped establish a writers’ club that lasted

many years.  They have lived in Claremont, CA, for 35 years.

The book The Oath of the Secret Pearl is the result of the author

and her sister comparing real life clues to the possibility of their having a

half-sister or a half-brother.  The author waited until all of the people

who may have been involved had passed away.  Writing the story to fit

the time-lines of events and the characters’ known personalities was an adventure for the author.