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abriel Vincent R. Zosa

June 15,

Jessamyn West was an American writer, a master of the short story and an accomplished novelist, who wrote with
particular sensitivity about mother-daughter relationships. She published her first book at the age of forty-three. She has since written more than eighteen. They include novels, short stories, poetry, science fiction, memoirs, screen plays, and one opera libretto. Her most recent book, Double Discovery, is an autobiographical account of her experiences during the summer of 1929 when she attended a literary workshop at Oxford University. Jessamyn was born in 1902 in Indiana, the first child of Eldo Roy and Grace Anna Milhous West. From her mother's family Jessamyn inherited a Quaker, a member of a Christian group that stresses the guidance of the Holy Spirit, that rejects outward rites and an ordained ministry, and that has a long tradition of actively working for peace and opposing war, lineage and a family relationship to President Richard Milhous Nixon. West was a second cousin of Richard Nixon, the late President of the United States. Growing up in the same rural Yorba Linda region as Nixon, West attended a Sunday-school class taught by Nixon's father, Frank. Her father taught school in Indiana and, after moving to California in 1909, achieved a certain measure of prosperity through various enterprises, including citrus farming and real estate. Jessamyn grew up in Southern California, attended Fullerton High School, and graduated from Whittier College. There she helped found the Palmer Society, in 1921, originally a literary society but reorganized in 1928 and became a social society for women. Later she worked toward a Ph.D in English literature at the University of California at Berkeley. Before completing her work for a Ph.D., West fell ill and was diagnosed as having terminal tuberculosis. She spent two dispiriting years in a Los Angeles sanatorium and was then sent home to die; under her mothers care, however, she recovered. During her long convalescence her mother told her tales of her own Indiana farm childhood and of her more distant pioneer forebears. West soon began writing stories and sketches inspired by her mothers tales. In 1923 she married Harry Maxwell McPherson, also from a Quaker background. Together they have lived for more than half a century in the California coastal area, he as an educator and she as a writer. In Napa, where he was for many years the Superintendent of Schools, she is known as Mrs. McPherson. Elsewhere he is known as Dr. West. Much of her work concerns Indiana Quakers. Although she was born in Vernon, Indiana she left the state at the age of six when her family moved to California. West lived her last two decades in Napa Valley California, and died from a stroke at the age of 81.