Evie makes the oven-baked brown rice with soups, while Lizzie is partial to oven-fried eggplant. Deputy Donna makes the spicy apple cider, and Lisa Leann thinks no one can resist her daffodil cake.
These ladies of the Potluck Club can cook a lot of dishes and dish a lot of talk.
They are the creation of Linda Evans Shepherd ’79 and her co-author Eva Marie Everson. Their new novel, The Potluck Club, was released in August and has been selling in major stores like Barnes & Noble Booksellers.
“It’s about women in the high country of Colorado who meet for food and goss-uh … I mean prayer,” Shepherd says.
Shepherd is a transplanted Beaumont native who also lives in the high country of Colorado, in Longmont. Her Christian faith is depicted in some of the characters, who attend Grace Church in the small town of Summit View, where the only thing worse than someone from Texas is someone from California.
Like the people in any town of any size, the citizens of Summit View talk about each other. And the women of the Potluck Club pray for them in a way in which the prayers often share information about the problems.
Shepherd finds humor in the stories about everyday life and people trying to live a Christian life. And she knows in the end, everyone struggles and everyone can find hope in religious faith.
The Potluck Club isn’t her first book, but it is her first novel. She has written 18 inspirational books and has become a popular speaker for women and church groups. In addition, she has a syndicated radio program, Right to the Heart, with segments of about three minutes. The segments are little stories with a laugh and a lesson.
Shepherd learned her lessons through tragedy and survival through her faith.
In 1986, Shepherd and her husband, Paul ’78, along with 19-month-old Laura, spent the Christmas holidays in Beaumont with family. The day after Christmas, Shepherd and her mother took Laura with them to go shopping at Parkdale Mall.
The ride home from the mall changed their lives. They collided, going almost 60 mph, with a minivan at the intersection of Texas 105 and Keith Road.
“It was something I couldn’t ever have imagined,” Shepherd said.
When she regained consciousness, she was surprised to find herself still alive. Her mother was ok. But there was no crying from Laura in the baby seat in the back. The baby seat had been flung out of the car with Laura still strapped in.
Laura had a skull fracture and was taken to St. Elizabeth Hospital in Beaumont, where she stayed in a coma for a couple of months. Then, the Shepherds flew her to a hospital in Colorado, closer to home. There, doctors later told her Laura was in a vegetative state and would never regain consciousness.
On the Webpage “lindaandlaura.com,” Shepherd tells about considering disconnecting Laura’s ventilator and then taking an overdose of pain pills to kill herself. But she didn’t “because I had faith and hope,” she said.
She learned it is difficult to distinguish a coma from a vegetative state, and she had faith Laura would one day return to her. In December 1988, Shepherd gave birth to son Jimmy.
“The excitement surrounding her brother” brought Laura awake, Shepherd said.
“It was a very slow process. There were long periods when her eyes were open like 24 hours, then she would close her eyes maybe two weeks,” she said about her daughter.
Laura never recovered to become an average child or teenager, but she is the love of her family and friends.
“Laura is severely damaged, but she still enjoys life,” Shepherd said. Though Laura is paralyzed and bedridden, she communicates with her tongue and participates in family life.
Her life with Laura strengthened the faith she had learned during her childhood days at First Baptist Church in Beaumont. Her parents are Leroy and Verna Evans, and her father served on the Beaumont City Council. Shepherd grew up in Beaumont’s South Park area, and she is a graduate of South Park High School. Lamar University was a natural choice for her.
“I lived closer to my college than I did to my high school,” she said.
While at Lamar, she met Paul Shepherd, whose father, Jim Shepherd was a physics professor. She graduated in 1979 with one of the first bachelor of fine arts degrees. Her degree focused on art, music and drama.
After they married, the Shepherds went to the University of North Texas, where she acquired a teaching certificate and he earned a graduate degree in engineering. He got a job in California, and she became a technical writer in 1981.
She worked as a volunteer with young people at church, and, after Laura’s accident, began writing about faith and hope.
“After I began writing, people asked me if I spoke,” she said. “I have a drama background so I said ‘yes.’”
So she became an inspirational speaker in addition to a writer and is the founder of the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association.
The Potluck Club comes from a lifetime of observing people, attending church and trying to be a good Christian. “My dad and my mother are both wonderful story-tellers,” Shepherd said. “We spend the dinner hour laughing at the events of the day.”
Humor helps people survive. “There’s so much to cry about in life if we can’t find the humor, we can’t find the joy,” she said.
Even in her despair when she spent weeks in the hospital with Laura, she could manage to find humor. She looked forward to a doctor who would visit “and we would just stand there and laugh at the silliness of life in the hospital,” she said.
That sense of observation has brought the small town of Summit View to life in the novel. Though the book has been out only a few months, readers are buying it, talking about it and forming their own Potluck Clubs. Shepherd and Everson have a Potluck Club Website (potluckclub.com), where fans can find study guides to help them understand the characters and the lessons they learn.
The book has a bonus. Besides offering humorous stories, it provides the recipes for Goldie’s breakfast casserole, Lisa Leann’s cinnamon rolls and other foods shared, in prayer, of course, by the Potluck Club.
And the adventures won’t end. Another edition of the Potluck Club is set to be published in 2006, and Shepherd said she and Everson will soon begin writing the third installment for 2007.
