Thanks to the help of the local community, 85-year-old Marilyn Jean Jones, who was recently diagnosed with Alzheimer disease, achieved her lifelong dream of becoming an author.

The mother of Sharon Zondag, executive director of the R.K. Laros Foundation, Jones has lived in rural New York all her life, and has always had a deep interest in Native American history. In her middle years she discovered a unique story of a German immigrant family, the Foxes, who homesteaded, staked a claim and survived repeated Native American attacks in untamed central Pennsylvania.

Jones discovered the tale in Bradford County History, published in 1878, and worked it into a dramatic retelling titled, “In the Shadow of the Iroquois.”

But she’d never had luck publishing any previous works, so Zondag reached out to be Bethlehem Area Public Library.

“I remembered reading in the Bethlehem Press about the publishing initiative recently launched by the Bethlehem Public Library and reached out to Executive Director Josh Berk about the possibility of printing my mother’s book,” she said.

“Josh galvanized an entire effort to have this book designed, edited and ultimately printed at Working Dog Press. In approximately three weeks, the entire local effort was completed and we were able to host a book signing for Mom in her memory unity at Absolut Care in Endicott, New York.

“It took a local village to bring this dream to fruition. It is an elixir of sorts that seems to make almost anything possible.”