CHAPTER 1

Only the natural functions of her body chained her to the reality
of the moment. She held off until the last second dreading to feel
the pain all over again. A steamy- hot sun burned its way through
the industrial smoke of an 1890, July afternoon in Rockland, Ohio.
The half moon in the door shimmered and went in and out of
focus, while dirt daubers made endless treks from some mud pit to
a protected place under the eaves.

Rose, glassy-eyed, looked neither to the right nor left letting
her mind be out in a high, green meadow filled with wild flowers.
Her bib-overalls, grimy undershirt, dirty tennis shoes, and boy's
cap were gone; in their place she wore a pale-pink pinafore, a
straw hat with a pink ribbon hanging down the back, and white
leather pumps with silver buckles.

Even at ten, Rose, christened Roseta Marie McKensie, had a
sense of her power, even if she hadn't yet utilized it. She found
strength out of poverty, caution from her life experience, and a
determination to achieve. Her school was an oasis in a bleak
desert and she constantly read ahead of the assignments and lived
in the richness of the library.

She knew to be wary of men and made it a practice to never
bathe when her father was at home; she hide behind a locked door
in the attic sewing-room with her mother when her father was
drinking.

When the younger three children were bedded down, the attic
room became a place of magic. Her mother's stories could whisk
Rose off to an English castle and they could "be somebody" for
hours at a time. Both her mother and father had come to America
as refugees from the great potato famine of the eighteen hundreds.
While neither parent had much education, her mother had served
as a domestic in one of the famous border castles where her father
worked as a cotter. Even though her mother worked long days for
not much more than food and lodging, at least she was exposed to
the life of royalty. Retelling of this life to Rose was her mother's
legacy.

Rose learned how to stand, to dress and to speak. She learned
of bone china, crystal and silver, foods not yet tasted, elaborate
menus and how to observe protocol. Somehow Rose knew that
these games had meaning for her future. Along the way she
discovered Charles Dickens--his life and his writings became her
banner and shield. Feeling the similarity of their beginning, she
shared his basic optimism that good would triumph over evil.
Now in this mill-town section of Rockland her mother
scrubbed her life away, load by load, on laundry from families
across town. Her father had coal dust ground into his lungs from
working in a steel mill. Rose coped with never having enough of
anything except poverty.

She fought her way past mill-town louts who wanted to take
her virginity. She watched haggard teenaged mothers having their
life drained away by suckling babies. Her mother would not let
Rose seek a part-time job at the spinning mill where girls as young
as ten, brought home their few pennies a day. She did battle to
protect the sanctuary of Rose's studies. Rose somehow knew what
she was learning was the key to breaking free for all their sakes.
At sixteen, Rose was naturally beautiful, a statuesque blonde
with a full figure. Her regal bearing impressed bystanders and her
diction remained an unknown tongue in mill-town. A rare flower,
Rose had mysteriously bloomed on an industrial dung heap. From
generations of plain, dull deficients, a primordial hiccup had
occurred and Rose was.