Louise Moeri (1924–2021)

Louise Moeri was born in Oregon and grew up during the Great Depression. She graduated from the University of California at Berkeley in 1946, the first in her family to attend college. She met and married Edwin Moeri, with whom she had children, shortly after World War II. She worked as a library assistant at the Manteca Public Library from 1961 to 1978. After retiring, she became a full time writer and published more than a dozen books for children and teenagers, in addition to poems and short stories. Many of her books deal with children overcoming some sort of adversity and were written in a number of different genres, including historical and fantasy, as well as modern settings. Her first book and best seller was Star Mother’s Youngest Child (1975), a Christmas story that became a classic. Some of her books were based on real life tales of the Old West handed down by her family such as Save Queen of Sheba (1981) and The Devil in Ol Rosie (2001). Chemo Club (2010) was a novelized account of her own encounter with cancer. Her book First the Egg (1982) was adapted into a made-for-TV movie. Louise received many awards and recognition for her writing, including the PEN Center Literary Award and Soroptomist Woman of Distinction Award. She often spoke to local schoolchildren about her books and the writing life.