DAPHNE, Alabama -- Jennifer Hewett "Jenny" Smith has a story to tell, which is just what she did.
The resident of Daphne’s Lake Forest community since 2008 wrote a book about her life’s journey that began where she was born in Cape Town, South Africa.
The biography, "A Faraway Land," published recently by Publish America, a print-on-demand publisher, travels through some of Smith’s earliest memories, experiences and struggles in South Africa, and navigates through some setbacks in America, a place they had always viewed as the land of "milk and honey."
Smith said she wrote the book initially for her children, "and it took on a life of its own."
"I saw that my children, who are the first generation in America, are already disconnected with the struggles we went through, and by the next generation they wouldn’t know where we’re from," Smith said.
Her children said "I didn’t know that" about some parts of the book, Smith said.
"We all go through dark days," she said. She hopes readers can be encouraged by her story.
"I want people to be able to identify with it," she said.
Smith said she was about 10 years old when she started playing piano for the church.
Her father, she said, was a pioneer who worked to start churches from the ground up.
"When we came to the States, we moved to New Orleans," Smith said. The family followed her father, who had come over previously as a minister to a church.
They were there for about a year before moving to Eunice, La.
Eunice, part of the Cajun country of Louisiana, was a good experience, she said. She was introduced to a lot of food she had never eaten before, including gumbo and jambalaya, and a different culture.
Families invited families into their homes for food and bonding, she said.
She called it a "small, close community, and you got to know people," Smith said. "In Eunice, we made a lot of good friends."
The family moved to Amarillo, Texas, for a few years, where she saw snow for the first time in her life.
Afterward, they moved to Fairhope, followed by Pensacola, before ending up in Daphne.
A lot of her family’s moves were partly because of church work, but also because of her husband’s work, she said.
"Daphne is a great community, and we’re enjoying it here," she said.
Her sister and parents also live in the area. Her father is an associate minister at Bay Community Church, and her parents have been married for about 50 years, she said. Her sister opened a horse riding trail in Fairhope called Turkey Branch Trail Ride.
Smith has worked part-time for a couple of years at Sport Nutrition Plus in the Eastern Shore Centre.
She and her husband, Derick, have been married for 25 years, and they have two daughters, Shana, 21, and Jade, 17.
Smith said she started writing as a way to express her creative energy since she hasn’t really been playing the piano, and she’s "absolutely loving it."
She even started working on a new fiction novel based in South Africa.
