Ruby Guidry Hotard always dreamed of writing a romance novel. Fascinated by the stories she heard about her great-grandmother, she decided to make her dreams come true. She did not want to let "the good part of life pass her by". So, at the age of 70, Ruby put aside her fears of not having a college degree and began writing her first novel, A Life Gone By. This fictional account of Ruby’s great-grandmother’s life is centered around stories told to Ruby by her own mother and included actual photographs of Ruby’s mother and the south Louisiana plantation home where the story is set, a home Ruby spent many hours in as a child and one which no longer exists today. Ruby Guidry Hotard grew up along the bayous of South Louisiana in Terrebonne Parish, which serves as the setting for the novel. She now lives in the Audubon Uptown District of New Orleans. Married and the mother of three, Ruby has five grandchildren and three great grandchildren. Leading a very active life, she has already begun work on her next novel.       _________________________________________   Terrebonne Genealogical Society TGS Newsletter Vol. 24 No. 4 June 2005 Saturday, June 25, 2005   Main Branch Library, Houma, LA 1:00 p.m.   It became clear to us, about halfway through her talk, that our guest speaker was not the kind of person to have a lot of spare time to sit around watching the soaps. RUBY GUIDRY HOTARD, author of A Life Gone By, gave us an informal talk about how she came to write a book about her great-grandmother. She (Ruby) did not include any genealogy in her book, but based her novel on stories told to her by her mother. What our members seemed to enjoy most was the discovery that Ruby was related to board member Daniel "Chuck" GUIDRY. She said that Chuck's grandfather was her favorite uncle. So that broke the ice, right there. She stayed for the whole meeting, even though she had to hurry back to New Orleans for a granddaughter's birthday party. She also told us that she has started writing a sequel. continued ---------------- http://www.rootsweb.com/~laterreb/tgsnew94.htm   __________________________________________________________________

Thank you.

A Life Gone By

A Romance Novel by Ruby Guidry Hotard

Love..... REAL love........

What price must we pay to find it?

Journey with this innocent young Cajun girl living in the 1800's

as she discovers what her mother really means when she wisely warns,

"Life is what you make of it...Don't let the good part of life pass you by."

Ruby Guidry Hotard greeting people at book signing.