This is an excerpt of Gloria Casale’s autobiography. Gloria is a renaissance woman born before her time. A nurse, physician, expert in bioterrorism transport, infectious diseases who received advanced training in anesthesiology, preventative medicine, and public health. I’m proud to say Gloria gave me the idea for a sinister plot line in my third novel, With Malice Aforethought. She’s a friend as well as a colleague.
Look for it on Amazon November 30th! But today, you can buy her two novels on Amazon. Links are below the bio.
An excerpt from Gloria Casale’s autobiography:
Early 60s.
The prince married the princess and they lived happily ever after.
I didn’t marry a prince, I married a two case of beer a week drinking frog. When he graduated from college he took a job with a company in New York City. It came with three martini lunches.
There was no ‘happily ever after for us.’
This was before ‘the pill,’ before Women’s Lib, before Equal Rights for Women. Women quit their jobs the day before they got married or as soon as they were six months pregnant. Most husbands didn’t want their wives to go back to work until their youngest child graduated from high school.
It took four years, a lot of marital discord, and two children for me to get the frog out, put the house on the market, and move to Mom’s house.
In less than two weeks I had a job as Evening Supervisor in a hospital in Newark.
I took care of the kids during the day and worked in the evening. Any crisis meant a midnight or one a.m. departure time. That translated to a two a.m. arrival in Garwood. Mom didn’t understand.
Arguing with her on a nightly basis wasn’t worth it. I found an apartment in Newark. As I put the last box in my car, Mom kissed us goodbye and said, “Come for dinner on Sunday.”
Back then, the labor law in New Jersey put nurses in the same class as waiters, waitresses, taxi-drivers, barbers and hair dressers. We didn’t have to be paid even minimum wage.
My husband wasn’t paying the agreed child support. He never took the kids for their weekends. My mother-in-law told me to stop being selfish. “After-all,” she said, “spending weekends in New York City with his buddies was expensive and time consuming. I had to understand, his new life was taking his entire salary.”
I didn’t understand. My pay check barely covered the child care, phone, utilities, food, gas for the car and rent on my two bedroom apartment.
The guy I dated all through high school and college and everyone thought I would marry showed up at my mother’s house one evening. She gave him my Newark address and phone number.
He’d finished basic training and was getting ready for his first deployment to Viet Nam. The night before he left for Ft. Benning he took me out for dinner. When he kissed me good night he told me he was going away, that he probably wouldn’t survive, and he told me not to wait for him. Looked like it wasn’t going to work the second time around either.
Money got tighter and tighter. I checked with a divorce lawyer. It would be at least eighteen months before I’d get a hearing. “Go to Reno,’ he said, “you only have to be a resident of Nevada for six weeks. Then you can get married again.”
Married again? That was the last thing I needed.
***
About Gloria Casale
Dr. Gloria Casale is an award-winning author of Bioterror: The Essential Threat and newly released Shadow Road. The first book in her second series, Counting Down, is expected to be published in the next twelve months. The series details the lives of ten women from one neighborhood. Twenty-five years later the women are disappearing one by one at yearly intervals. A serial killer is determined to murder them all.
Gloria is also currently working on An Emergency Medicine Memoir she hopes to have the first of a two to three-part series released in the next six months.
Gloria grew up in a small town in New Jersey and earned her medical degree from the University of Kentucky and completed advanced training in anesthesiology, preventative medicine, and public health. She received training in bioterrorism and bioterrorism response at the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases and is a recognized expert in the international transport of disease. Gloria also served as a consultant to the Division of Transnational Threats at Sandia Laboratory.
The author has been an invited speaker to members of the US military and various ports associations on the topics of bio-weaponry and the international transport of pathogens. She currently lives in New Mexico with her tuxedo cat Hugo.
Website: https://www.gloriacasalewrites.com/
