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Grandmother's Story Grabs Readers

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By D'ANN LAWRENCE WHITE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 24, 2008

BRANDON - It was intended to be the culmination of her career, that one final coup de grace before settling into retirement.

Ruth Carmichael Ellinger of Brandon had always wanted to write her paternal grandmother's life story. Now that she and her husband, the Rev. Wright Ellinger, had planted their final church, the Fountain of Life Church of God on Lithia-Pinecrest Road in Brandon, and her mother and father had died, Ellinger decided it was time to keep this promise to herself.

"My grandmother was a young widow in Lancaster, Ohio, who had a 2-year-old when her husband passed away," Ellinger said. "I remember hearing all these courageous stories from her. She was very colorful. It wasn't very friendly for single women back then, especially a woman with fiery Scottish blood who was struggling for independence."
Ellinger is no stranger to the writing process. It's something she's been doing since she was a child and continued throughout adulthood, writing columns and short stories for secular and Christian publications as well as a children's Christmas book.

But "The Wild Rose of Lancaster" was her first novel, and Ellinger had no idea where to begin to find a publisher.

"I began sending it out and a major publisher liked the book but they wanted me to revise it and I felt it was losing its integrity and compromising my work," she said.

Around that time, the publishing company Ambassador International was starting a fiction line and wanted the novel just as it was.

The book was published in 2005 and was an instant hit in Fairfield County, Ohio, where the novel is set, prompting Ambassador International to request a sequel. In short order, Ellinger published "Wild Rose of Promise," which follows her grandmother, Elizabeth, through the suffragette movement. She is working on her third novel, a prequel going back to the time the family, Clan Davidson, was exiled from Scotland and came to America.

"I love the research so much sometimes I forget to write," Ellinger said. That research has taken her to Scotland, where she has visited the Davidson Castle, the family's ancestral home.

So telling her grandmother's story wasn't an ending at all. It launched Ellinger's career as an author and mentor.

She helped found and is the president of the Brandon Christian Writers, a chapter of the American Christian Writers Conference founded in 2001. She is a frequent speaker at writers' seminars and book clubs.

In 2006, she was named writer of the year at the Ohio Conference of the American Christian Writers, and received the same honor at the Florida conference in July.

"It's been interesting to see how God has taken this and done more than I ever dreamed," she said.

Ellinger's books are available at Barnes & Noble Booksellers, LifeWay Christian Stores, Amazon.com and through her Web site, ruth ellinger.com.

Reporter D'Ann Lawrence White can be reached at (813) 657-4524 or dlwhite@tampatrib.com.

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