First time book author Mildred Mills left Atlanta to speak about her book in her hometown of Wetumpka.
Mills introduced everyone at the Friends of the Wetumpka Library Author Talk to her first novel — Daddy’s House, A Daughter's Memoir of Setback, Triumph and Rising Above Her Roots.
“The book is about resilience,” Mills said. “It is about a little girl who grew up picking cotton and soared to many, many places.”
The book is almost autobiographical describing her time growing up and leaving home. It tells of women she has come across in her life including those when she volunteered in a women’s shelter after she left a corporate executive job.
Mills grew up on a 60-acre family farm near the Bouldin dam. She arrived there in her mother’s womb. Mills was the third of 17 children and left home as her mother was pregnant with Mills’ youngest sibling. Mills is part of the Wetumpka Class of 1969 having left W.B. Doby High School in 1967 as integration moved through the Wetumpka schools. It was a positive experience for Mills and nothing like many of the horror stories some Black children faced at the time.
“I can’t complain about anything,” Mills said. “A couple of my classmates sent notes apologizing for anything they might have done. I didn’t have those issues.”
Mills spent almost every weekday working on the family farm. Just two weeks after graduating Mills left in the middle of the night with her father driving and her mother sobbing on the porch. Mills was heading to Columbus, Ohio to better herself at a technical school. It was June 1969.
“He gave me $100,” Mills said. “He said he would send more in the fall. He never sent more and I never asked for more because I left 13 children younger than me at home. I had to figure out how to make some money while I was in school.”
Mills modeled and even won a beauty pageant.
She went on to become an IT professional making it to the executive suite before leaving the corporate world at the age of 50. She started to volunteer at a women’s shelter and saw where many had been abused.
“I heard so many horrible stories,” Mills said.
Mills got into writing while taking an English class; she even wrote an essay that won the 2022 Estrucan Prize. From there, Mills wrote Daddy’s House, her first novel.
In Wetumpka Mills read the first chapter describing the night she left her white cinder block home contemplating staying but realizing a better future for her and her family was to leave for school.
The farm is still in the family. Fifteen of her parents' children are still living and get together at least once a year. Some always get together on holidays.
“My parents raised adults,” Mills said. “They said, ‘When you leave this house, you represent this family.’”
Her book can be found on Amazon.
