A BOOK AND A CHAT with Beth Fehlbaum

Beth Fehlbaum’s tragic childhood was the inspiration for her first novel. Fehlbaum grew up in the Dallas area and has been teaching for 10 years. She said she began going to a therapist to help deal with childhood sexual abuse about four years ago. “I wasn’t handling my life very well. All the tricks I had used to keep from thinking about it weren’t working anymore,” she said. “I was living in a place of anxiety and fear.” Fehlbaum said her therapist suggested she write a novel. She said she wrote the book over a six-month period in 2007. “It took me four months to pull myself out of my own head and get beyond my own pain and grief to be able to tell someone else’s story,” she said in a question and answer with The Lariat Online. “But once I was able to do that, to look at the experience of sexual abuse and recovery from an observer’s standpoint, the story flowed.” Her book, “Courage in Patience,” is a fictional account of a 15-year-old girl, Ashley Nicole Asher, who is sexually abused by her stepfather. Fehlbaum said the first two chapters are about the character’s past, and the rest is about recovery.