Engaging Life

Engaging Life: Memoirs of a Charming, Willful Southern Woman of the 20th Century chronicles the true story of the life of Marcellite, a mischievous, sophisticated, and thoroughly Southern woman with great depth of character. Highly social and fun-loving, Marcellite-cousin, once removed, of author Dr. Henry Dolive and granddaughter of A Touch of Glory! protagonist, William Louis Dolive- immersed herself with people and their activities everywhere she went. Like its prequel, which takes place two generations prior during Reconstruction, Engaging Life is packed with three-dimensional characters full of vim and vigor and humorous action.

Engaging Life highlights various stages of Marcellite's life, from her childhood until her death at 102, including three marriages, although she only counted two. Her life was shaped by the fascinating history of her time: World War I, living in southern cities, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, and, in her second, 34-year military marriage, World War II, post-war Germany, the Korean Conflict, Huntsville and the space race, caring for her mother on the historic family grove, another marriage and extensive travel-both domestic and overseas. Although she had no biological children of her own, Marcellite was a cherished "mother" and "grandmother" to her descendants by marriage.