What started as one woman’s idea to avoid writing alone has turned into a community book project featuring the stories of 24 women who call Flagler County home. In a candid conversation recorded at SunBros Café, the organizer behind the project — a hairstylist, artist, and writer who splits time between Flagler County and California — sat down with friends to talk about the book, its origins, and the ambitious plans that follow.
The project grew out of a group called Ladies of Flagler, a social circle the organizer described as something between a friend group and a community — one that has quietly grown to include women from all walks of life and all corners of the country. The women come from Sweden, Poland, New York, Miami, and beyond, and many found each other through community events in Flagler County.
The book itself was born from a desire for connection. The organizer said she had already written one book on her own, but found the experience isolating. “I already wrote a book, and I tell everyone it’s just not fun to write a book when you’re alone,” she said. So she turned to her circle and asked if any of them wanted to write their stories together. The result is a collection of personal essays by 24 women, each prompted by a set of seven questions she developed to draw out their histories — where they came from, how they found Flagler County, what their first experience with the group was like, and what most people don’t know about them.
The stories that came in were, by her description, deeply personal. Two contributors wrote about surviving breast cancer. One woman wrote about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. Another contributor documented her experience with a difficult marriage and divorce. One chapter covers a woman whose mother was married at 15 and who, as a teenager herself, took her own grandmother to court to gain custody — a story the organizer said left her in tears while compiling the manuscript. “I’m crying, as I’m reading them,” she said of the editing process.
One of the book’s most prominent personal stories belongs to a contributor named Courtney, who was diagnosed with breast cancer at age 29, beat the disease, and has since married and is expecting her second child. Courtney had been journaling through her illness, and the book gave her a place to put that in writing. “I always wanted to write a book. I just didn’t know what to do,” Courtney reportedly told the organizer when she invited her to contribute.
The group has already been holding book signings and launch events, with plans to host a breast cancer fundraiser tied to the book. The organizer described an organic, easy-to-join atmosphere around those events — if someone wants to meet the women behind the book, she said, they can simply show up and introduce themselves.
As for what comes next, the organizer is thinking big. She has already sent a pitch to a former high school friend who is a producer and writer with credits on the television show Last Man Standing, hoping to get help navigating a path toward a TV adaptation — possibly a Netflix-style series. “Even if he says no, he can point me in the right direction,” she said. A road trip book tour is also taking shape, with planned stops in Nashville, Tennessee — the hometown of one of the contributors, named Lisa — and San Diego, California, tentatively scheduled for August 19.
Throughout the conversation, the overarching theme was one of women supporting women, sharing stories that might otherwise never be told, and finding that their experiences, no matter how different on the surface, tend to connect in unexpected ways.
The book can be found here on Amazon.
The post Flagler County Woman Behind “Secret Lives of Flagler County Wives” Book Shares the Story of 24 Women, One Community, and Plans for Much More first appeared on Flagler County Buzz.
