A story born in the creative writing group at the Salina Senior Center is now a published book available on Amazon.com!

The Rocking Horse is Salinan Gloria Zachgo’s first published work. Zachgo explained that the story came out of a writing exercise the Senior Center’s creative writing group did about three years ago.

“We write from prompts,” she explained. “On this particular day, our prompts were a rocking horse and a gingerbread man.”

Zachgo said that after the story was completed for the creative writing group, it continued to haunt her until she finally decided to turn the story into a book. That process took a year to complete.

The following synopsis of The Rocking Horse was provided in a news release from MMD Newswire.

Jenny Lynn Preston was just 2 years old when her life was completely changed. Her mother, great aunt and great uncle were brutally murdered and she mysteriously disappeared right after. While her grandparents struggled to cope with the heartbreak of losing their daughter, family members and young granddaughter, local sheriff Will Barclay dealt with guilt from his own involvement with the murders. But the crime remained unsolved and continued to haunt all parties involved.

Decades later, a woman with the alias Julie Hendricks is led to a small Midwestern town by a childhood toy and the hopes of avoiding her abusive husband. The young woman learns how to live on her own for the first time in her life and slowly builds her self-esteem and makes new friends. When learning about her new town’s history, Julie begins to connect the dots that she may be Jenny Lynn Preston, who vanished 22 years ago.

With the help of her new friends, including Dan Barclay, she heads to Chicago to visit her father and learn her childhood history. But fate intervenes, and a suspicious accident takes her father’s life before questions can be answered. The woman Julie always believed was her mother has few details about her past, but it may be too late as her dangerous husband finds her in the small town.

Zachgo’s dramatic story aims to entertain readers as well as give them an idea as to how families deal with the emotional and mental difficulties of having a child or loved one disappear.