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When she was a girl, Jeannie Harper read a half-dozen books a week.
In the evenings she would play outdoors with her friends until the street lights came on. That was her signal to go inside to join a different set of friends, the characters in the Hardy Boys books and the girls in Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women."
A voracious reader, young Jeannie learned that the life of the mind can be just as much fun as life down the street.
"As an only child, you find ways to entertain yourself," said Jeannie, a mother and physical therapist who lives on Signal Mountain.
When she married and became a mom, Jeannie hoped her son, Dan, would share her passion for books.
She prodded. She encouraged. She practically begged her son to read more. A person who loved the very smell of books, she even stooped to bribing Dan with ice cream and Legos to get him to read more.
But as often happens when parents press for things, Dan, now 18, had his own ideas about how to spend his time, his mother says. Although a good student, he migrated toward outdoor sports such as hiking and rock climbing.
Then one day, while she was working as a library volunteer at Dan's school, Jeannie had an epiphany. She was looking out the library window at the mountains on the horizon when she began to feel a story taking shape in her head. She could imagine the contours of a young adult novel that would blend Dan's love of the outdoors with another of his interests, Civil War history.
The result is a work of historical fiction with a dash of time travel to transport modern teens to the Civil War era. The book, "Glint," is available on Amazon.com and select local bookstores. (Visit jd-harper.com for more information.)
Jeannie thought that if she could write a story compelling enough to appeal to an active boy like Dan, maybe other kids would like it, too. She knew that reading is an acquired taste, and that children who learned to read for recreation often began by falling under the spell of a favorite book.
"I'm a mother and physical therapist. I'm not a teacher," Jeannie explained. "But I know what reading did for me."
Too, Jeannie remembered as a child her parents buying her some of those custom-printed books that had her name, and the names of her pets and dolls, inserted into the pages.
She also knew that when people talked about getting a "good education," they usually meant developing a trust in the printed word to enlighten and entertain. What's more, studies have shown that reading fiction and getting inside the heads of book characters is a way people learn empathy.
Meanwhile, the literacy trend line in America is not looking good. According to the National Endowment for the Arts, fewer than half of Americans now read a work of literature in any given year - a measure of mental engagement that has been dropping for a generation.
To jump-start her writing, Jeannie signed up for a seminar with Alabama author Jerry Ellis, and later followed that up by taking a class in creative writing at Chattanooga State Community College.
At one point, Jeannie sequestered herself and wrote eight hours a day for weeks to complete the first draft of "Glint," she said. Then came the really hard work, editing and polishing her book, which covers a sweep of history from the battle of Missionary Ridge in 1863 to the Scopes Trial in Dayton, Tenn., in 1925.
At the end of the day, the author's most important review came from her son.
"It's a good book, Mom," Dan said. "It could almost be a funny movie."
Mission accomplished, we'd say, and perhaps a "glint" of good things to come.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.