Patra Ann Taylor grew up in Lima, Ohio, sitting at her mother’s knee while stories spilled out of Frankfort, Indiana — of Depression-era Christmases, railroad men, parlor pianos, family secrets, and neighbors who looked out for one another in ways people don’t quite anymore. Her mother had a gift for memory. Patra had a gift for listening. For decades, those stories lived in handwritten notes tucked away in a drawer.
In 2021, she found them in a box of old papers.
What emerged first was Christmas Angels — a tender, richly imagined holiday novel set in the fictional town of Jeffries, Indiana, in 1933. It was, Patra has said, the book she was always meant to write. By the time she finished it, she had also outlined Edge of Summer, the first full novel in the Anna Ghere Mysteries series, along with more than a dozen short stories rooted in the same beloved world. Her mother’s memories had become a universe.
Patra brings uncommon credentials to historical fiction. She spent her early career as a freelance writer and marketing director before finding her true calling as a journalist and columnist. Her humor column “Kitchen Sink Chronicles” — and its successor, “Gray Matters” — became reader favorites in the Charleston Mercury, the South Carolina newspaper where she has written features, columns, and profiles for a quarter century, serving as both the publication’s managing editor and executive editor during that time. Along the way, she co-produced LAWTalk, an award-winning television series named the best local advertising for under $5,000 — proof that she has always known how to tell a story that lands.
She lives in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, with her husband, Stephen Bucher, and their Australian terrier, Olive, who has no interest whatsoever in the 1930s.