A View From the Hill: Short Story Collection

Mattie Hill Shields was born in rural North Carolina in 1909 and never got beyond an 8th grade education, yet she was meticulous about furthering her education in other ways. Her lifelong dreams were to see the world and become a writer, but she abandoned these in order to care for her ailing mother and younger brothers and sisters. She ended up raising three generations of her family's children, never looking back at her own lost dreams. When she had time, she often sat and worked on various short stories or read about all of the places she imagined visiting "someday". By the time of her death at 93, she had attained some of her traveling goals, and certainly accumulated a lifetime full of stories. This collection contains the few short stories she wrote and is a tribute to the selfless life she lived that touched so many others.

Mattie Hill Shields was born in 1909 in rural North Carolina and lived to the age of 93. She was a devout Christian woman who lived a selfless life of care for others. In all of the time I knew her, I never heard her say an unkind word to or about anyone. Her dreams of becoming a world traveler and writer were given up so that she could be the rock of foundation for her family, and as far as I know, she never looked back.