Ollie's Gift: Inspired by a True Story - Softcover

Roncari, Maria

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798822976535

Publisher: Palmetto Publishing, 2025

Synopsis

What happens when a single, painful truth shatters a child's innocent view of the world?

December 1958. Nine-year-old Marie's world overflows with love in a small New England town, where Christmas glows with family gatherings, laughter, and the comforting certainty that life is good and safe.

But a post-Christmas trip to her missionary cousin in Alabama abruptly thrusts Marie into a world she never imagined-where racism, hatred, and poverty define daily life for some in the Jim Crow-era Deep South-and her sense of innocence is forever changed.

Confused, heartbroken, and desperate to understand such cruelty, Marie's safe world begins to unravel.

Then she meets Miss Ollie. Blind, ill, and enduring unthinkable hardship, the older woman offers Marie something life-changing-a simple yet profound awareness of compassion and love in the face of hate.

Inspired by true events, Ollie's Gift is a heart-stirring memoir that traces the testing of innocence, the awakening of compassion, and the extraordinary power of love to heal even the most wounded heart.

If we do not model love and compassion for our children,

the world will teach them something else.

Unforgettable-perfect for fans of To Kill a Mockingbird, The Help, and other stories of moral courage and awakening.

Well, another one of those stories that kept me up. I mean, the way you captured your voice as a child and talked about your perceptions as you were having them. I just couldn't stop turning the pages. I think you have an incredible story. 

-Jack Canfield, Author, Motivational Speaker,

Co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul series

I read this book with my eight-year-old daughter. We laughed, we cried. Maria has a way of painting an extremely vivid picture of the world, which exposes just how children think, what they think, and how one interaction can change a child/person forever.

-Heather A, Parent

About this title

About the Author

Maria Roncari is an author, speaker, and lifelong storyteller whose work explores kindness, compassion, and the ways stories shape how we see one another. She discovered her voice as a writer at the age of thirteen after an interrupted dream of becoming a professional dancer inspired her to write a humorous school play about the unexpected turns life can take. That early experience began a creative journey that has now spanned more than five decades. Maria's work has included writing, directing, producing, teaching, and developing creative projects across the worlds of theater, education, and entertainment. She spent seventeen years in Art and Design Entertainment at Universal Orlando and has written and officiated nearly eight hundred love story marriage ceremonies, telling the unique stories that brought couples together. Her memoir Ollie's Gift is inspired by a life-changing childhood encounter during the Jim Crow era that revealed the quiet power of compassion in the face of injustice. Maria is also the founder of the Bodewell Endeavor, an initiative devoted to helping families, educators, and communities nurture compassion and moral courage in the next generation- believing if we do not model core values for our children, the world will teach them something else. She believes every life holds stories waiting to be told-and those stories have the power to bring people together.

Edition details

• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Publication date: 2025
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798822976535
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 120