A book signing for “In the glory days of Elvis” will be held at Barton Public Library on Saturday.
Three-time novelist and El Dorado native Josephine Rascoe Keenan will be celebrating the release of the last installment of her trilogy with a book signing and talk about her inspirations for the series.
‘The days of Elvis’ trilogy is a historical fiction young adult series, that begins in the first chapter of book one with the Elvis concert that was held at the El Dorado High School Auditorium in 1955, where the main character Julie Morgan attends and runs into her identical look alike, Carmen.
“I wanted to show young people what life was like in the U.S. when rock ‘n’ roll became popular,” Keenan said.
Keenan also said that, although the books were written with young people in mind, there are many older readers who enjoy the books as well, because the books take them back in time to their own childhood.
Keenan was an El Dorado class of 1958 graduate. She attended the University of Arkansas where she majored in speech and drama, also spending a summer abroad in Quebec, Canada, learning French. She received her master’s in speech and drama at the University of Colorado in Boulder. She spent some time working on Goodson Todman’s ‘To Tell the Truth” show and she met her now husband, Frank Keenan, in the Washington, D.C. area. After their marriage, they settled in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Along with her writing, Keenan spent 33 years acting in both film and theaters around Cincinnati and is an accomplished oil painter with art shows in Indiana and Kentucky.
According to Keenan’s biography on keenannovels.com, after many years spent in professional theater and film as both an actress and director, Keenan decided it was time to take her journal writing to the next level, expanding into novels and short stories.
“I always wanted to write, but I didn’t feel like I had much to say until I was older,” Kennan said.
In the “EHS Class of ‘58 Memory Book,” Keenan wrote, “Five (now 15) years ago I retired from the theatre world to try my hand at writing for teens and middle-grade readers. So far it has been a successful effort, with a story published in the November 2007 issue of Cricket magazine, and a poem published in Mature Living, August 2002. I am currently working on a novel for teens.”
She published her debut novel and first of the trilogy, “In Those First Bright Days of Elvis” with Pen-L Publishing in May 2016. Book two, “In Those Dazzling Days of Elvis” followed in June 2017.
Keenan said she is excited to hold a book signing in El Dorado.
“I love El Dorado,” she explained. “It still feels like my home, even if I haven’t been there in a long time.”
The book signing will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. Saturday at Barton where Keenan will be available for questions and signing copies. There will be a limited number of books available for purchase at the event.
Haley Smith can be contacted at [email protected] or at 870-862-6611.