ABOUT MARGARET
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Margaret Drake is a retired occupational therapist and art therapist.
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Born and raised in Iowa, attaining higher education in California, she was able to observe the transitions from the beat generation to the hippie culture to the women’s liberation movement.
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The early part of her career was spent as an elementary teacher in California & Hawaii.
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After two marriages, two divorces, and no children she retrained as an occupational therapist.
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After finishing her doctorate she taught at four other universities one of which was in Taiwan.
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Currently, Margaret lives in Hawaii where she enjoys writing historical novels.
BOOKS BY MARGARET DRAKE
STUDIO: A NOVEL
In 1980s Jackson Mississippi, Lillian Leigh has begun her day as a massage therapist in the historic Lowman House when she finds a note under her door. When she discovers Shantay, a sex trafficked child, hidden in a bootlegger's tunnel beneath the house, she must decide the right thing to do to save this little girl.
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ABAYA
Elizabeth Adams expects the adventure of a lifetime when she accepts a faculty position at the Nursing Education Program at the National Saudi University for Girls but nothing could prepare her for the whirlwind of drama and intrigue she encounters as she navigates romance and rescue under the close eye of the Committee for the Protection of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
HAOLE WIFE
Ina Marie Martin the Haole Teacher married Dr. McNeill in 1920. They had a girl child named Leilani. This was the beginning of Prohibition in the United States and the Territories such as Hawaii. In this story Ina Marie navigates through the full wave of events driven by the forces of Prohibition.
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THE SOLDIER AND THE QUAKER
In 1921, the world has moved on from the flu epidemic and World War I. Felicia Collins is ready to begin her career as a teacher in the Midwest. George Webster, the principal of the school, is slowly more and more interested in the young teacher, and as a murder mystery rocks their small town and changes up the tempo of the community and its many characters, their relationship evolves.​
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HOMESTEADING WOMAN
In 1910 women could not vote. The romance of the western frontier still lured many people to adventure and the quest for wealth in the prairies. Homesteaders were enticed to settle the lands with the goal of civilizing the west. Miss Ruby Taylor school teacher joined this flood of new settlers to the South Dakota plains.
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SANATORIUM GIRL
In 1920 tuberculosis was the main killer of young people. Occupational therapy had just begun as a profession unto itself. The Mississippi State Tuberculosis Sanatorium had been open only two years. Louisa Anne McFarland from Jones County was sent to the Sanatorium to heal her tubercular lungs.
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HAOLE TEACHER
WWI took many men away leaving women to adapt to their absence. Iowa school teacher Ina Marie Martin found herself a victim of this tumultuous time. Like men who were physically or mentally injured she needed to recover to find a way to avoid becoming an outcast. She fled her shame and found a new life on the Island of Hawaii.
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MEN'S RECEIVING WARD
The medical needs of wounded soldiers during WWII caused military hospitals at home and on battle fronts to take on many doctors, nurses and ancillary healthcare workers. This left a severe deficit for the home folks. After peace came again, the discharged medical workers transitioned back to domestic institutions. This is the story of an occupational therapist and doctors and nurses in an Iowa hospital during that upheaval.
NOVELS, MEMOIRS & TEXTBOOKS BY MARGARET DRAKE
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NOVELS:
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2024 Studio: the novel
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2024 The Soldier & The Quaker
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2019 Abaya
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2018 Men's Receiving Ward
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2016 Blackmail Behind the Barracks
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2011 Haole Wife
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2009 Haole Teacher
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2008 Homesteading Woman
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2005 Sanatorium Girl
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2004 The Disappearing Patient. A novel about an occupational therapist
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2003 Reconstructing Soldiers: An Occupational Therapist in WWI
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MEMOIRS:
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2021 My Life: Wall Crank Phones to Smartphones
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2010 A US Feminist in Saudi Arabia: 1980-1982.
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TEXTBOOKS:
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1992 Crafts in Therapy and Rehabilitation
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1997 Crafts in Therapy and Rehabilitation Edition 2
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Margaret Drake is a retired occupational therapist, art therapist, and teacher who practiced her professions in four states and two foreign countries.
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Margaret has lived the past twelve years on the Island of Hawaii, Hawaii (aka the Big Island), continuing her career writing novels, engaging in civic organizations, and volunteering in a rural hospital.
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Margaret Drake, Author & Teacher
MARGARET DRAKE PROMOTIONAL CONTENT
ABAYA An Audio Interview with Margaret Drake (2019)
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Elizabeth Adams expects the adventure of a lifetime when she accepts a faculty position in the Nursing Education Program at the National Saudi University for Girls but nothing could prepare her for the whirlwind of drama and intrigue she encounters as she navigates romance and rescue under the close eye of the Committee for the Protection of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
When a student begs Elizabeth to help save her life she embarks on a quest that brings her closer to the heart of Saudi Arabia and her own beliefs about freedom love and purpose.
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➤ Available at: Amazon.com
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BLACKMAIL BEHIND THE BARRACKS
Promotional Video (May 12, 2021)
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Before WWII, a fair-skinned colored girl in the South had few chances to raise herself unless she could figure out how too "pass." The war offered new opportunities to join the effort to defeat the nation's enemies. Clara Brett took advantage of this national need to pursue her dream of becoming an occupational therapist.
The path to this goal led to overcoming personal as well as professional obstacles and threats. Other opportunities for relationships with men and women were part of the turmoil of caring for injured soldiers.
➤ Available at: Amazon.com
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​HAOLE WIFE An Audio Interview with Margaret Drake (2011)
Attempting to flee her shameful past as an unwed mother, Ina Marie leaves her home state of Iowa and lands a teaching job in Hawaii. That's where she meets Dr. Clyde McNeill, and they are married in the summer of 1920.
Ina Marie enjoys the small privileges afforded to a plantation doctor's wife, and she appreciates the time she gets to spend with her daughter Leilani. But that bliss changes on a stormy night in 1923. While Clyde is treating a patient, he drowns, leaving Ina Marie and Leilani alone to fend for themselves.
Evicted from the plantation home, Ina Marie must make a new life for herself and her daughter. Against the backdrop of the times and the sugar plantation culture of Hawaii, Ina Marie navigates through the full wave of events driven by the forces of Prohibition.
It's also a time when automobiles are just becoming a more common means of travel and women have achieved their voting rights.
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​A work of historical fiction, Haole Wife, by author Margaret Drake, tells the story of one woman and what it takes to survive in the Prohibition Era of the 1920s on Hawaii Island.
➤ Available at: Amazon.com
CONTACT
Email: lmwgdr@gmail.com
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