Book is a fictional account of the ups and downs of a relationship
Published in the Nov. 26 – Dec. 9, 2014 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Staff Report
Loretta Wilson in her kitchen with a copy of her self-published book, ‘You Take the High Road: A Love Story.’ Photo by Marty Cheek
Loretta Wilson has a love story she wants to share. The 75-year-old Morgan Hill woman recently released her self-published novel “You Take the High Road: A Love Story” which is a fictionalized account of her married life with husband Jim.
“I was just missing my husband,” she said about the origins of the novel. “I was just thinking about him and the kids were telling me some of the funny things he did because he was a crazy man, things that I didn’t know about. Like, remember when dad came home with that black eye, funny things like that, and so I said, ‘Oh yeah, let’s write about that.’ So I just started writing stories. It started evolving into this wonderful love story we had.”
Her advice for young people who get married or into a relationship — stick with it. The tough times don’t last and it gets better when you work through your problems.
The Wilsons did have a difficult first 20 years of their 48-year marriage because of Jim’s alcohol addiction. But after he went through the Monte Villa Rehab Hosptial program, he never drank again and the remaining 28 years of their marriage were filled with happy memories.
“He was a tough man to live with, let me tell you,” Wilson said. “I guess nobody would have stayed married to this man as long as I did. But we had a very special love.”
Wilson’s novel is a fictional account of the ups and downs of a relationship that started in the 1950s and ended with Jim’s death in 2005. The title is based on an old Scottish song that Wilson sang at her husband’s funeral.
Loretta and Jim first met when she was a high school student of 16 visiting the Santa Clara County Fair with her girlfriends. They met the handsome Jim — who stood out for Loretta with his intense blue eyes — and Loretta and him wound up taking a ride on the Ferris wheel together that night. The hours grew late and the girls missed the last bus of the day, so Jim drove them in his 1952 Ford car to their homes.
From that point on, Jim wanted to date the young Loretta. But first he had to meet her family of devout Catholics.
“My Italian grandmother wanted to know what part of Italy he was from, which was funny, with a name like Wilson, he was Scot,” Loretta said. “My grandmother didn’t like him.”
But the rest of Loretta’s family liked him and her father gave her the go-ahead to date the young man from Morgan Hill. Their romance bloomed over the course of two years.
“I finished school and then my father insisted that I go away to college for a little while,” Wilson said. “I went up to the College of Notre Dame in Belmont. And after the first semester, I felt sorry for poor Jimmy, he was burning the tires on his car going back and fourth three times a week from Morgan Hill to Belmont to see me. So we decided, let’s just get married.”
The marriage resulted in three children — Julie, Jill and little Jimmy — coming into the world over the course of two and a half years. And now Wilson has seven grandchildren and three great grandchildren. Granddaughter Alisa Wilson helped write the novel. Her grandmother doesn’t own a computer, so she wrote the book out in longhand and Wilson spent the summer typing it into a computer and then working with Internet print company 48 Hour Book to turn the novel into a published form.
While writing the novel, Wilson changed the names of some of the characters because she didn’t want to embarrass certain family members.
The novel contains photos of the couple throughout the years of their marriage and many of the people in the story are real residents who live or used to live in Morgan Hill. People who have lived in Morgan Hill for a while — “the old timers” — will know some of the people and places in the book, Wilson promises.
“I think that my best chapters in the book are the last chapters because they’re very sad but they’re very true. Totally true,” she said. “It was a good love. I tell young kids, you know, they don’t hang in long enough, and I think a marriage is like a fine wine and it gets better with age.”
Wilson got her start in fiction in 1963 when she took a creative writing class at Gavilan College and wrote a story about a migrant family based on her experienced working at the Farm Labor Office. She also spent 35 years running the Flowers by Wilson florist shop on the corner of Monterey Road and John Wilson Way, a street named after Jim’s father.
When she’s not promoting her book at signings such as at the Saint Catherine’s Church, BookSmart and other locations, Wilson helps out as one of four kitchen cooks in the Sierra LaMar search efforts on Saturday mornings. She also swims and does water aerobics three times a week at a heated indoor pool in Gilroy to keep fit.
“I also love to tend to my vegetable garden,” she said. “I can everything. That’s the Italian in me. Food is important to Italians.”
Writing “You Take the High Road” was a labor of love for Wilson because she wanted to share the good time and the hard times of her life with Jim with her family and friends. She even throws in some “steamy” scenes of her wedding night in the book.
“My daughter read the book last night and she called me up and said, you know I cried and cried and cried because it brought back lots of memories,” Wilson said, and then chuckled heartedly. “And then she goes, “You know mom, you’ve got a little bit of fiction in there.’”
