Get to know Shirley J Shepherd and her work

Shirley J. Shepherd has lived in Maine almost 50 years. Though never a farmer at heart she raised, at various times in her life, thousands of chickens to be broiled, collected thousands of eggs from overly possessive hens, lived on a dairy farm, baled hay, canned endless garden vegetables, and still found time to raise five sons and later two grandchildren.

After her first marriage ended, she spent summers sailing the coastal waters of Maine with her future husband. Eventually, they, along with her youngest son, sailed for a year from Maine to the Caribbean and on to South America. This trip was journaled, diaried, documented in scribbled notes, and became the subject of Never Leave on a Friday.

In later years, accompanied by her husband and grandchildren, she spent time in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica and then lived for a year in Honduras, taking Spanish classes. Despite that, her Spanish, along with a handful of partial manuscripts, remains a work in progress.