Shelley is a nature girl. When she was ten years old, her family homesteaded in Willow, Alaska where she hiked through the woods near their cabin, with her playful goat, Sugarfoot trotting along behind her. She liked seeing Foxglove growing tall in shades of purple, pink, and white and imagining the blossoms as little gloves on the feet of fox. She enjoyed picking salmon berries and popping them in her mouth; they were like blackberries, only pale orange in color. When rose petals fell off their stems in the fall, her mother asked her to bring her some rose hips for jelly. She was proud to see the jars of pink jelly displayed later on a kitchen shelve. The love of the outdoors stayed with her, so when John came into her life in her sixties, and he liked taking country drives, it worked out perfectly. Shelley was married to Tom Warner for forty-five years and they adopted two children from India. She has two grandchildren, now in their teens. Tom was a pastor/theologian and Shelley has written about her experiences as a pastor's wife in a book "A Very Present Help". After Tom passed away, she wrote about widowhood and raising grandkids in a book "What Remains Behind". She has also written about a faith struggle in a book "Recognizing Wolves". Three years after Tom's passing, Shelley woke up one morning and thought to herself: "I wonder what is happening with Johnny and his sister Nora." Johnny had been her first boyfriend, the summer after seventh grade. Nora had been her best friend. What happened next is a story of romance and adventure, as told in this book "Adventures with John in his Red Ford Truck". Shelley's family left Alaska when she was twelve and settled in the Pacific Northwest. Later, she and her husband lived in different places. Her husband once said, "We've lived in all four corners of the U.S." And they had--Washington and Oregon, Maine, California, and Florida. Eventually, they settled in Boise, Idaho where Tom grew up. That's where she expected to stay but life has its surprises. She was drawn back to the Pacific Northwest where she's close to family and to John. She lives in a small Washington town with her grandson and her little white terrier Baxter. Shelley finds joy in writing. When she isn't working on a book, she posts inspirational stories on a Facebook page entitled "A Very Present Help and Other Writings by Shelley Warner". She has been a part in raising her two grandchildren. She likes to bake cookies but she and her grandson can't eat them all, so she waits until she and John get together. Or she takes some to her mother who is in her nineties. She's thankful that, now that her mother is in her final years, she's close enough to see her several times a week. Shelley is happy that John came into her life. Someone once said, "You act like a teenager around John." She answered, "He makes me feel like a teenager." Life has some happy surprises.
