Tales

About the Author

Shirley Wilson-Rickett has been published in over thirty journals, magazines, and anthologies the fifty-three years she has been writing and publishing. She lives and writes in Kansas City, Missouri with husband Charles and their rescue dog, AllieMo.

About the Book

What if the fairy tales you learned as a child were never meant to put you to sleep, but to wake you up?

In Tales: Memoir & Poems of an American Woman, myth and memory collide in a spellbinding blend of poetry and lived experience. A girl raised in a family where her Uncle's spiritual exploration led him through many different religions grows into a woman who must untangle the stories she inherited, Cinderella, Demeter, chthonic dreams, and the whispers of ancestors, to understand the life she's built and the one she must reclaim.

Across these pages, rural childhoods, broken marriages, fierce motherhood, and the long shadow of addiction unfold beside the timeless wisdom of archetypal tales. Each chapter peels back another layer of what fairy stories really teach us: how to survive the dark woods, how to bargain with the monsters, and how to find our power when the world insists we have none.

Written with lyrical fire and disarming honesty, this book invites you into a journey of transformation, one that proves myth isn't an escape from real life, but the deepest way into it.

If you've ever wondered where your strength comes from, or why certain stories cling to your bones, this book will feel like coming home.