Rachel's story is a true one of young love, joys, and triumphs experienced, but also is about difficulties of being and staying together as they are beset by hardships, disappointments, and struggles toward making a good life for themselves. Her story begins in her early teens while growing up in Southern Kentucky and being the oldest child in a large family of very strict parents. She relates of the rigors involved during post-Great Depression years, through WWII, and in her high school years. As a senior in high school with a diploma, a certainty along with a lucrative scholarship promised, she begins to see that her dreams of becoming a teacher can really happen. As reality hits, she wonders if she really wants this. It means moving away from Denton, her lifelong home, and leaving all the people involved in her life. She has recently met a special person, a returning WWII navy veteran, Brad, who has retuned home to find his life in an uproar. His children were gone, and his wife has deserted him. As he is attempting to pick up the pieces, he meets Rachel. Rachel and Brad's story is one of joys, beset by poverty, disappointments, and struggles. Through it all, they keep their eyes focused on the light at the end of the tunnel that promises a life of joy and excitement. Interwoven, their hard work, their love for each other, and their trust in God is the common thread that binds it all together. Rachel G. Carrington was born into a family as the first child of eleven children. She was born during the Great Depression, a time that found poverty rampant in many middle-class American families who were unaccustomed to doing without. Her parents' chief desire was to see their children with good educations in K-12; beyond that, further education was not realistic. A promise of a scholarship for Rachel made her desire of attending a teachers' college seem attainable. It was not to be, as told in her life story. Even so, her strong desire to learn, instilled by her father, caused her to seek to educate herself through any means possible. In her growing-up years, self-help education programs were not easy to find. She discovered, however, that by contacting local and state government officials, she could find materials to help her in her desire to learn. Many long hours of writing letters and scanning informational pamphlets that she had received helped her further her learning. She wanted to be an English teacher, should she have attended college, so her information requests centered on grammar and punctuation guidelines. The knowledge gained through this self-help program she had managed to obtain stood her in good stead to gain her the confidence to try what she always wanted to do-write a book about her life. She once described this life as "one so fulfilled that on looking back, I can see very little that I would ever want to change." The Early Years is her first book

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