Story originally printed in the Coulee News or online at www.couleenews.com

Published - Thursday, March 13, 2008

By JO ANNE KILLEEN | Staff writer

She wrote her first book when she was 10 years old, a romance story that she distributed to all her young friends. Ever since then, Maureen (Schmidgall) Lang has been writing romances, but she’s abandoned the steamy bodice ripper stories of her youth to explore inspirational romance interlaced with real-life challenges and messages about faith to move her stories along.

Lang has written several books of both types and will be sharing her truth-seeking journey, her challenges and her triumphs with a West Salem audience at the Hope Community Church on March 29.

Lang, the sister of the church’s pastor, Mark Gilbert, will talk about her two most recent books, “The Oak Leaves” and “On Sparrow Hill,” which reflect her real-life experiences of raising a special needs child.

Lang credits her love of writing to her parents and said she always has loved to write since growing up as the youngest of six children in the Chicago area, describing a happy family with lots of noise.

“I was an avid reader from a young age.” Lang said. “My mother would tell us bedtime stories that she made up. I realized I didn’t need to have a book in front of me to tell a story.”

She said her father was an unwitting contributor to her being a writer. “I overheard him talking about me to someone, when I was very young. He told that person ‘she’s the creative one’ and I wanted to live up to that assessment.”

Lang wouldn’t even talk about her early books, which were inspired by the Harlequin romances she read as a child. “They’re not who I am,” she said.

She had abandoned her faith when she was younger during her bodice-ripping story-telling days. But a divorce shook up her life and set her on a new, more spiritually fulfilling path.

“I realized my faith was important and I realized I wasn’t living my faith,” Lang said. “I even withdrew the book I had with my publishing agent (another bodice ripper) because it didn’t reflect my image of myself in relationship to God.”

For the next 15 years, she didn’t write anything. She remarried and now has three children and lives in a different area of Chicago. Her oldest daughter is from the prior marriage. She and her second husband have two sons. The older of the sons, 12, has a genetic disorder called Fragile X Syndrome. Lang said although he is 12, he has the physical and mental capacity of a 2-year-old.

The two most recent books deal with families receiving a devastating diagnosis. In “The Oak Leaves” Lang weaves the discovery of a genetic disorder into the story through a historical framework from 150 years ago. The heroine of the story is exploring lost documents that illustrate a very sad period of an ancestor who couldn’t marry the love of her life because of a family curse. The curse was that some of the children of the family line were born “feeble minded,” as it was called in those days.

As the modern day heroine discovers more of the letters and about the curse, she and her husband realize their own son is showing signs of having something wrong with his developmental abilities.

In real life, Lang and her second husband received the diagnosis when their son was just 1 year old and she was pregnant with their second child. There was a 50/50 chance the unborn child could have the same disorder. They learned that she was the carrier of the genetic disorder and worried the child she was carrying had the disorder.

“The story has a lot of my experiences in it, but the characters are different,” Lang said. “When she (the modern heroine) receives the diagnosis, I did call on my own recollection of what that felt like, what the doctors said, my reactions, the questioning of God, almost abandoning my faith again.”

She didn’t think writing a memoir or using other biographical techniques was going to reach as many audiences. “I wrote the book to tell people about Fragile X, and I thought the more people that read this, the more they will learn about it,” Lang said.

The newest book, “On Sparrow Hill” deals with being a servant, Lang said. It follows an aristocratic woman who opens a school in Ireland for people with disabilities in Victorian times. She finds out being a servant is a noble thing.

“Being a servant is one of the things I’ve learned about being a parent: I’m still changing his diapers and there’s no end in sight,” Lang said. “I’ve learned I shouldn’t chafe so much about being a servant. Being a servant is a good thing.”

Like all her romances, Lang ends her books on positive notes. “I can’t imagine writing a book that isn’t hopeful or ends happily.”

“The Oak Leaves” ends hopeful. Lang said the main characters are stronger for their experiences than when they started. “(The heroine) realizes her son is going to have challenges all his life and dependent upon her and that she is going to have to take care of him for the rest of her life. She wants to know who is going to take care of her. By the end of the book, she realizes God is going to be there for the rest of her life and will take care of her needs.”

AT A GLANCE