“The Square Heap” tells the story of Lucy, a young woman in 1875, determined to seek more from life than caring for her brothers and their families. Responding to an advertisement for mail order brides on the frontier, she marries Roan Shields, a widower with children, and moves to the wilds of Missouri Territory. The challenges and discoveries she faces there shape a compelling and endearing story of a brave and capable woman.

I’ve been asked how I came to publish this story, which was written by my mother, Dora Lee McKee. Mom was petite, blonde, and pretty, and had a wonderful smile.  She was very talented and could do anything. She also had a vivid imagination.

My mother attended Burbank High School and longed to study art, but her father saw little value in educating girls, thinking, ‘she will just get married and have babies anyway.’ She worked at Lockheed Aircraft before and during the war, famously serving as a “Rosie the Riveter” riveting nose cones on planes because she was the only one on the line small enough to crawl in there with a rivet gun. She ultimately married and had children, in line with the expectations of her time.

A voracious reader, she was a hopeless romantic trapped in a pedestrian life. I am her eldest child, and I adored her.

In the early 1960s, with two teenage children and no marketable skills, she began writing to escape what she saw as a monotonous daily life. Sometimes she wrote late into the night, fully absorbed by the characters she created. Most of the novels, short stories, and other writings she left behind were written during this time. Sidelined by illness, she died in 1972 at the age of 52 from complications of breast cancer following a radical mastectomy, before any of these works could be published. 

I inherited all of her writings, mostly handwritten manuscripts. Frankly, they lived in a box under my bed for many years, as it seemed too painful to deal with them, but I always loved them and thought they were wonderful and I wanted to do something with them. I suddenly realized that I was getting older and didn’t know how much longer I would have to accomplish this task.

In January 2025, the unthinkable happened. The Eaton Canyon Fire destroyed my home, my street, and my neighborhood of 35 years. My husband and I escaped with two cars, two laptops, and a cat.  All the original material was destroyed when my home burned. Fortunately, I had transcribed the bulk of my mom’s stories onto my computer during the COVID shutdown.

After a few months in a temporary space, we decided to relocate to the Hillcrest community in La Verne, where we now live, while we make decisions about rebuilding on our Altadena property. Working on “The Square Heap” and mom’s other books has been a large part of the healing process for me, as I face the challenges ahead.

Now is the time for other people to get acquainted with these wonderful characters and their stories. “The Square Heap” was published on October 22, 2025, which would have been my mother’s 105^th birthday. The heroine, Lucy Shields, is a true pioneer and a woman of extraordinary strength and character. I like to think that Lucy was the woman my mother would have been, had she lived in that era.

The book is available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle. I hope you buy it, read it, love it, and leave us a fabulous 5-star review.

Dale LaCasella and her husband live in La Verne.