Author credits Independence with her success as writer, artist

by Charles Cassady

Millions of readers were captivated by Delia Owen’s debut novel Where the Crawdads Sing, set in the Outer Banks marsh territory of North Carolina. This October, an Independence-born author-artist with ties to the same area is presenting her own love letter to the region.

Linda K. Sienkiewicz (Nerva) is the author of Love and Other Incurable Ailments. Its heroine, Serenity, suffering a broken engagement, family tragedy and obsessive health neuroses, finds solace in a random batch of discarded love messages passionately penned by a complete stranger. The discovery leads Serenity to the Ocracoke Island, North Carolina, in search of their origin.

Like her main character, Sienkiewicz lives in Michigan, but has found her muse in Ocracoke. “Since 1985, when our youngest child was a baby, our family has vacationed on the beaches of the Outer Banks,” she said.

“We started taking the ferry to Ocracoke Island, not just as a day trip, but as a destination. You can watch the wild ponies, be a pirate for the day at Blackbeard’s Jamboree, fly kites in the wind, drive onto the beach and chase ghost crabs across the sand after dark.”

Sienkiewicz said the island changes people and became the perfect setting for Love and Other Incurable Ailments.

She credits an Independence upbringing for setting her on the road to writing.

“I lived in Independence from the age of two until I married at twenty-three,” she said. “My husband and our young family stayed in Ohio until his job took us to Michigan. We still have family and friends in the greater Cleveland area.”

Sienkiewicz recalled as a child her regular trips to a then “tiny” public library. “I still remember the smell of the books, the quiet, no one hovering over you. It was a safe space where I could lose myself in stories,” she said.

One of her favorite authors as a child was Astrid Lindgren, who created the character Pippi Longstocking.

“Pippi Longstocking was my hero,” Sienkiewicz said. “I admired Pippi’s physical and emotional strength. After all, she can lift a horse. But more importantly, she faces the world with unshakable self-confidence.”

Like Pippi, Sienkiewicz said she had a strong creative streak and didn’t always want to follow the rules.

“There was something undeniably thrilling about her wildness where curiosity was celebrated instead of corrected,” she said. “Although my mother encouraged my creativity, school often felt like a place where I was expected to sit quietly and fit in.”

Her best memories of Independence schools are in English classes, and teachers who nurtured her earliest prose. “Carol Heskett, Joseph See and Henry Czekalinksi praised my writing, and for a young person who often wondered where she fit, that encouragement meant everything,” said Sienkiewicz.

She also became proficient in art, working in graphics production and calligraphy instruction. She attended the Cooper School of Art in Cleveland, and later developed journaling.

In Michigan, her journal entries generated essays and poetry. “Poetry became short stories, and eventually I found my way to writing novels,” she explained.

She was published in the Heartlands Today book series issued via literature programs of Firelands College, and returned to school to earn a Master of Fine Arts degree in creative writing. She did so at 55, “proving that it’s never too late to get what you want,” she said.

Her first novel, In the Context of Love, was published in 2016, set in a thinly disguised Northeast Ohio. It is a drama about a woman with a husband in prison raising her children and revisiting a youthful trauma and family secrets that upended her life.

“Part of the story takes the characters back to the ’70s, and as I wrote, I envisioned Independence High School, Route 77, the Flats, lake-effect snow, my beloved hometown,” she said. “Some of my school friends said it was like a trip back in time.” The novel wound up a finalist for a slew of literary awards.

Sienkiewicz’s artistic touches resurfaced in a juvenile title also inspired by an Outer Banks experience. “When my grandson was small, he was frightened by the ghost crabs skittering across the sand. Wanting to ease his fear, I wrote and illustrated a children’s picture book, Gordy and the Ghost Crab, which highlights empathy, problem-solving and respect for nature,” she said.

Getting Love and Other Incurable Ailments ready for its debut “required as much perseverance as writing it,” said Sienkiewicz. “I spent two years querying literary agents, collecting rejections and revising the manuscript. I also began submitting directly to publishers.”

The effort paid off when Regal House Publishing offered her a traditional contract in 2024 for publication in October 2026.

“The experience taught me that rejection isn’t always a dead end – sometimes it’s an invitation to write a better book,” she said.

Sienkiewicz said her writing career began as a little girl who wandered the library shelves dreaming of bigger worlds and a mother who believed books mattered.

“We don’t age out of creativity; we simply keep building on the foundation that was laid long ago. For me, that foundation will always be Independence,” she said.

Photo caption: Linda Sienkiewicz’s third published book comes out this October. Photo submitted.