Merriweather in Search of the Fairies

Marcella Horn (1929-2014) grew up on a small farm in Sylmar, California. As a child, Marcella loved to play in all the washes, meadows and trees in the then rural area. This setting first stirred her imagination and became a basis for her stories. Marcella honed her story-telling abilities by making up scary stories to tell her two older sisters, Marie and Emily, at night. Over the years, the three girls helped their parents build a successful chicken ranch, and at age 20, Marcella won the title of Fiesta Queen for the town of San Fernando. Later, she attended college in Los Angeles and studied creative writing. Marcella met Virgil Horn through a friend and they married six years later. The two shared an interest in literature, art, jewelry and gardening. They had three sons, Gaines, Kelly, and Joel, and lived in an old Adobe house in Sylmar that they turned into a custom picture frame and jewelry shop. Marcella also had the first organic vegetable farm in the area and sold her organically grown produce in a palm leaf roofed vegetable stand near the street that bordered the property. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the couple decided to move to a remote spot. A friend told them about a mine in Trinity County, California. He encouraged them to see it and advised that they could mine their own gold and sell their jewelry by mail order. At first sight, Marcella and Virgil both fell in love with the wilderness paradise they found at the end of a steep narrow foot trail. In 1967, the family moved to what they call 'The Flat' and had countless adventures in the 45+ years since. Many of their early adventures are described in the remarkable true story, IMPOSSIBLE BEYOND THIS POINT, co-authored by Marcella. Her first book in the Whimsical Adventures series, MERRIWEATHER IN SEARCH OF THE FAIRIES, is a charming tale for both children and adults using her lifelong love of the natural world as a backdrop.