Today I was sitting in Linda’s office after a Lego League practice and one of Linda’s friends and teaching colleagues walks in Linda’s office and drops incredible news on us. A movie based on a book she wrote was picked as one of the 16 films out of some 3,000 or so films submitted to hit the main stage at the Sundance Film Festival! She also wrote the screenplay, so it was all jaw-dropping news. In the oddest corners of the world, like at Marshalltown Community College, the creative writing teacher suddenly gets her life turned around (again)!
The book is autobiographical, called This Dark World: A Memoir of Salvation Found and Lost. The book is out of print and I haven’t read it, but it portrays Carolyn’s life as a pregnant 17-yr old girl in a Des Moines trailer park who joins a kind of hippie fundamentalist sect and her journey out of the cultish group.
No doubt many adventures are ahead for Carolyn, not the least of which will be seeing this part of her life played by Vera Farminga (who played opposite George Clooney in Up in the Air) along with Josh Leonard of Blair Witch Project fame.