She was the founding producing director of Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, OR, and directed with many professional Portland theatre companies in the 1980s.

She is the author of the groundbreaking Women Stage Directors Speak: Exploring the Effects of Gender on Their Work (McFarland, 1996, 2000) and has been published in multiple professional theatre journals.

After her retirement from teaching, she began her association with Sunbury Press with Keeping the Lights on for Ike: Daily Life of a Utilities Engineer at AFHQ in Europe During WWII; or, What to Say in Letters Home When

You’re Not Allowed to Write about the War (Sunbury Press, 2019), a book based on her father’s letters home from Europe during WWII.

She had always known she was adopted, but it was only as retirement approached, and with a friend’s encouragement, that she began the search for her genetic heritage through DNA testing. 

Finding Sisters explores how DNA testing, combined with traditional genealogical research, helped her find her genetic parents, two half-sisters, and other relatives in spite of being given up for a closed adoption at birth.

She is currently working on a new memoir about her late-in-life second marriage and sudden widowhood titled Adventures with the Bartender: Finding and Losing the Love of my Life in Six Short Years.

visit Rebecca on her website, https://rebecca-daniels.com/.

Bee: How long did it take you to complete Finding Sister’s? Include some of the research involved.

Rebecca: The story began with a DNA test in early 2014, but the search didn’t really take off (in other words, I didn’t find any critical matches or contacts) until almost a year later.

Once I started finding relevant matches, I kept careful and highly detailed notes but didn’t actually start writing the narrative until another couple of years had passed.

My research throughout the search (from 2014-2018) involved exploring my DNA matches by contacting and interacting with the individuals involved as well as traditional genealogical research (census and immigration records, birth, death, and marriage registers, etc.) once family names or individual shared ancestors had been identified.

Once I started the actual writing process in 2018, it took about two years to complete the manuscript, propose the book to my publisher (Sunbury Press had published my WWII book about my parents in 2019 and had indicated interest in the genetic genealogy story I was working on), and sign the contract for publication with them.

Bee: At what point in your search for your birth family did you decide to write ‘Finding Sisters’.

Rebecca: After I found and met my birth mother with Cousin Thomas’ help, he suggested that I should try to sell my story to Ancestry, but because my initial testing had been with a different provider, I knew that Ancestry wouldn’t want to feature a story that didn’t start and end with their company, so I decided to start writing for a broader audience.

Bee: You developed a special friendship with your distant cousin Thomas via email. Can you tell us more about that?  At the end of the book, you said you have lost contact with him.  Since publication has he been in touch? 

Rebecca: At first, I was a little suspicious about Thomas and his level of enthusiasm for my search, but once I realized he was a distant relative, a genetic genealogy addict (for lack of a better term—he loved the excitement of the search process, especially when it was connected to his family tree), and a sophisticated researcher who had a lot to teach me, I started interacting with him electronically with great regularity.

That interaction involved lots of conversations about more than just genealogy and, over time, turned into a strong friendship with a sense of familial affection developing between us (like an aunt with her favorite nephew). I was even thinking that I might consider going to Sweden to meet him in person and to see many of the ancestral places he was telling me about in our correspondence.

Unfortunately, he confessed that he struggled with depression and once my search was complete, he shut down communication between us. I contact him every now and then, giving him an update about the book and how it’s being received, but he still does not answer me. I hope he’s okay, but I’ve had close friends who struggle with depression, and I know how hard it can be for them at times, even when they want to remain in touch, so I make myself available but try not to push.

Bee: Tell us about your cover. Did you design it yourself?

Rebecca: No, I didn’t. My publisher hired a cover designer who asked me for any ideas I had for the cover. Initially, I had two different ideas to share.

My first suggestion was an image of a traditional family tree but using photos of some of the family members I was discovering instead of names.

The second idea was to use the DNA double helix or chromosome charts as an impressionistic background for the lettering of the book title. The designer is the one who suggested the use of an actual tree (instead of a more traditional family tree-style chart format), using a photo she had taken, with a few images of my new relatives floating in the branches. 

Bee: Can you tell us about your challenges in getting your first book published?

Rebecca: My very first book (an edited version of my doctoral dissertation about women stage directors) was published while I was working as an academic, and I was well mentored in how to approach the process of getting an academic book published.

When it came to the first creative non-fiction book (Keeping the Lights on for Ike about WWII), I made a decision to send proposals to various publishers who specialized in military history books, especially WWII. I didn’t have an agent, so I focused on small publishers who didn’t require authors to have agents in order to make proposals.

Working sequentially, starting with what looked like my most promising possibilities, I proposed the book to several publishers, most of whom decided to pass or already had something similar under contract, but eventually Sunbury Press expressed an interest.

Bee: When did you first have a desire to write?  How did this desire manifest itself?

Rebecca: I wrote my first “book” in elementary school about a family trip to Mexico. Because I loved to read, I developed an interest in telling stories that intrigued me. And, of course, I wrote poetry as an adolescent (who didn’t?).

Bee: How important do you believe having a good editor is for the success of your book?

Rebecca: Very important. But I also believe in getting critique throughout the writing process, so in addition to wonderful editors who work for my publisher, I also get a lot of value from detailed critiques of my work in draft from my women writers group. 

Bee: What is your usual writing routine?

Rebecca: I’m not a person who has a regular writing routine. Though I write often, the impulse to write is usually driven by the story I’m trying to tell.

Bee: What was your first job?

Rebecca: My first real job was in the accounting office of a local textbook depository during my first summer home from college.

Bee: Can you tell us about the memoir you are currently working on, Adventures with the Bartender?

Rebecca: The book currently in progress, tells of my late in life second marriage and finding happiness with a soul mate I never thought possible in my younger years.

In addition to being a high school teacher, my husband had run an Adirondack hotel for seven years, and his nickname was “the bartender” because he was happy to mix drinks for anyone who visited our house.

After only six years together, I lost this wonderful new husband, suddenly and unexpectedly, in the fall of 2010, just a month or so after all his doctors told us he was hale and healthy, even after he had experienced some medical challenges in the previous few years.

At first, journaling about that loss was a way to cope with my grief, but eventually I decided to write what I’m now calling my grief memoir about that relationship and about learning how to survive as a widow. 

Bee: Where can our readers find out more about you?

Rebecca: My Website

Rebecca: No one has asked if I am working on anything in addition to the Bartender manuscript The answer is that I’ve written a whole series of short essays about various experiences in my life that don’t necessarily have a single narrative arc but are all part of who I am and how I was shaped by my life experiences and relationships.

 I call that project my “Mosaic Memoir” and hope that one of these days it will eventually come together to become a publishable book of some kind.

Bee: Thanks again and good luck with Finding Sisters!

Follow Here To Read Bee's Review of Finding Sisters