Mary Graf

Mary Graf was born in Saginaw, Michigan, to parents who lived through the Great Depression and worked hard to give their children better opportunities than were possible for themselves. She has degrees in English literature from Indiana Wesleyan University and the Ohio State University and a PhD in English literature and rhetoric from the University of South Carolina. She also attended two enlightening media-literacy summer sessions at Appalachian State University that were designed for graduate students and teachers who wanted to include media-literacy education in their classroom practices. The insights inspired by academic work done in these places, along with her familial background and the conclusions about life and culture she’s drawn from overlapping roles of wife, mother, grandmother, teacher, Christian, and American citizen provide the subjective underpinnings of this book. She asks nothing more of her readers than that they do what her protagonist wanted to help students learn to do and what would have saved two of her characters, Jillian and Dean, from becoming the victims of scammers: look beyond the emotional appeal of her story to evaluate the ideas beneath.