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Katlynn Brooke was born in the country of Rhodesia, that is now known as Zimbabwe. Her father was a construction builder for the government for many years and was assigned to out of the way places deep in the bushveld, far away from towns or any kind of civilization.
For years, Katlynn’s family lived a camping lifestyle with no electricity, running water or other luxuries we take for granted now. Katlynn was used to elephants and lions roaming around their back yard; the lions bringing their night kill to eat under a baobab tree that she and her siblings played under during the day. Her memories of her homeland are as fresh as the air she breathed on the banks of a meandering, African river. For the first part of her schooling, she was home-taught by her mother because they did not live near any schools. In 1959 she was sent to a boarding school many miles away but she pined for the bush and her family so much that she was removed by the end of the school year on doctor’s orders. Fortunately her parents moved into a town where she attended a government school until her high school years, when they moved back to the bush again, and once more it was “correspondence school” until she graduated.
Katlynn arrived in the United States in 1979, graduating from Northern Virginia Community College with a 2 year degree in Art (Illustration). She also took courses in creative writing here, and has enjoyed writing for most of her life.
Reviewed by Maria Beltran for Readers' Favorite
Katlynn Brooke’s novel Talk to the Moon is a story that spans two generations and is set in Africa. Gabe Blanchard grew up believing that his father died at the hands of a disgruntled farm employee. The whole truth is revealed to him when he is given a copy of the diaries kept by his godmother, Holly Morgan. Now the master of Greystones farm, he will learn the deepest secrets of his mother Avril, and the life journey of his godmother from an unhappy childhood in Cape Town, South Africa, to a mission house in the former Rhodesia and beyond. Will he find it in his heart to continue loving the people he loves after reading the diary?
Reading the novel becomes a thrill, knowing that we are trespassing into the private life of Holly Morgan. Katlynn Brooke’s style in story telling is quite effective because it gives the reader a feeling of intruding into a woman’s life without her permission. This somehow pushes me to read on, thinking that she will stop me from reading her diary if she finds out. In addition, the author's choice of language is lyrical and engaging. As Holly Morgan writes the events of her daily life, it is easy to picture a young woman who finds herself dealing with life’s joys and sadness.
Most of the entries are ordinary adventures of a young woman working in a mission house in 1945 Africa and this makes the story quite believable. The plot will, however, take some surprising twists and turns and it reveals some dark secrets that have been hidden for so long. It is a story that may have truly happened because truth can indeed be stranger than fiction.
