By Blake Deshazo

The Selma Times-Journal

Selma native Patricia Weil is taking readers back to earlier days of the Queen City with her latest book, “A Circle of Life.”

Weil’s childhood memories of growing up in Selma were the inspiration behind writing the novel.

“I watched the world around me when I was a child, and I saw these gaps between wealth and poverty that were huge in Selma when I was growing up,” Weil said. “I saw all of the little niches in between the way people were trying to make a life for themselves according to some vision. It was rich material for writing.”

The book details the lives of two characters that are trying to find happiness during tough times.

“It’s an American historical set in Selma in the years between and following the two world wars,” Weil said. “It tells the story of two characters’ attempts to find happiness in a world where both lives and marriages are defined not by choice but by circumstances.”

Weil said the idea for the novel came to her when she was 21 years old and in college, but she didn’t start writing it until she retired from teaching in 1996.

“This book just started writing itself because I wanted to write it for so many years,” Weil said. “I was sitting around one day with a TV guide, and I started writing on the back of it. I had to keep getting up to go grab sheets of paper so I could keep writing. I didn’t even know what I was writing until it came to me that I was writing this novel.”

Weil said there is a deep meaning within the pages of her book that chronicles life during the Great Depression.

“I want people to take away the idea that we never really know other people until we investigate their lives,” Weil said. “Because they don’t necessarily have the choices to have the life they wanted, and we never know what’s inside.”

“A Circle of Earth” is available to purchase online through Amazon.