When Angels Fly

After surviving the cruel rage of tyranny from her mother and ex-husband, Sarah Jackson traveled a new path; a journey of loss, heartbreak, and ultimately strength. How do we survive the unthinkable, our child suffering from a terminal illness? They say there is no greater loss than that of a child; I say losing a child is the king of loss. Sometimes the thing that helps us survive it, is knowing we are not alone. Bestselling author, Sarah Jackson, will take you on her journey of hope and strength as she provides an intimate raw look at her life.

"When Angels Fly" is a true story of the struggles of a mother before and during the illness and ultimate death of her five-year-old son. It is a story of perseverance, heartaches, courage, and a mother's undying love for her child.

A young girl grows up dodging her mother's blows and as she hides inside her room to cry, she thinks that the years ahead will transform her life. With this belief, she is lured into love and marriage only to later find out she cannot run away from her past life and that marriage is not a shield she can use against the emotional assaults of her mother.

But faith, in its many forms, drives this young-girl-now-turned-into-a-woman across the other facets of challenges the world has yet to play on her. The loss of a child in her womb, the grappling hands of the man she trusts, the family's incessant fighting, and yet again the beckoning loss of another son.

Will Sarah survive through all this? And will someone come to turn things around for her, hold her hand, and see her through whatever life has still in store for her?

"I read this book after the author appeared on the We Love Memoirs group, Spotlight on Sunday. The story is a very moving account of the author's life and most importantly the story tells of her son Eli who becomes sick with cancer and subsequently dies. The book is in four parts with the third part being told from her diary recounting the months of Eli's illness and his passing away. The first two parts of the book set the scene and show how Sarah's life has been hard with an abusive mother throughout her childhood and then marrying a husband who is also abusive. As I read I felt very much that the mother was a psychopathic narcissist at best and the husband was an abusive alcoholic who had no feeling for his family and his only love being the bottle. Sarah has a very hard road which many of us would not survive I am sure. Her faith does give her solace and even though it wavered at times in the end does help her through. I enjoyed reading the book but not so much the diary format although this was a way of telling the story day by day. I admired Sarah's love and devotion to her children and her loving heart comes through. How she managed to cope with the mother's ongoing abuse through her son's illness is beyond belief. I will refrain from saying too much more as don't want to give more away as there are many other aspects to this heartfelt story." Julie Watson, Author

Mary L. Schmidt writes under the name of S. Jackson along with her husband, Michael, pen name A Raymond, and Mary L. Schmidt. She grew up in a small Kansas (USA) town and has lived in more than one state since then. At this time, Ms. Schmidt and her husband split their time between Kansas and Colorado (they love the mountains and off-road 4-wheeling). Traveling is one of her favorite things to do and she always has a book or even three books to read, in the same week. She drew paper dolls and clothes for them, and with watercolor as her medium when painting scenes, especially flowers. She continued with art in high school exploring a wide variety of arts and loved it! Her creative side loves to be an amateur "shutterbug" and they have an online art gallery. In college, she went into the sciences of all things and received a bachelor's degree in the Science of Nursing. Her nursing career was phenomenally successful, and she hung up her nursing hat in December 2012.She is a retired registered nurse; a member of the Catholic Church and has taught kindergarten Catechism; she has worked in various capacities for The American Cancer Society, March of Dimes, Cub, and Boy Scouts, (son, Gene, is an Eagle Scout), and sponsored trips for high school music children. She loves all forms of art but mostly focuses on the visual arts, such as amateur photography, traditional, and graphic art as her health allows.She has written sixty-one books with others in various stages of production, and she is included in four anthologies.