This is a work in progress, and both the blurb and cover are subject to change.
Watching Joanne Holbrook Patton move across a room, people often found themselves already at her side, even before she spoke a single word. In a lifetime marked by over forty moves, she approached each new place the way a farmer approaches a barren field, asking, “What needs to be improved here?” With that, she set to work connecting people and strengthening communities, leaving each one better than she found it.
Descended from five generations who walked West Point’s Long Gray Line, Joanne became a steadfast advocate for Army families, veterans, and the preservation of military history. While her husband, Major General George S. Patton (IV), carried his family’s formidable legacy into Korea and Vietnam, she emerged as a leader in the American Red Cross and Army Community Service. Her commitment to children with disabilities grew from personal experience and inspired a lifetime of advocacy and care.
Drawing on Mrs. Patton’s private papers, the personal testimony of friends and family, and an extensive collection of unpublished family photographs, recordings, and home films, The Lady Who Shines: The Pull of Joanne Holbrook Patton illuminates a woman who served the living and kept faith with those who served. Eyes open to everything life placed before her, she embraced a simple truth: “Opportunity taps time and again, often faintly, but we can train ourselves to hear it.”
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Stefanie Van Steelandt is the author of Lady of the Army: The Life of Mrs. George S. Patton. What began as one biography became a seven-year journey in the company of two women whose lives, in different ways, left a lasting imprint on those around them—and on the writer who came to know them intimately.
Minnegate Press 