Jane Basta is a freelance writer. Her stories and articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines in Colorado and Montana, where she now resides with her husband, Jim. "Slide Down My Cellar Door" is Basta's first published fiction.
"Slide Down My Cellar Door" is set in the historic mining country around Trinidad, Colorado, where Basta had been employed as a correspondent for the Pueblo Chieftain during 1984-1985. The perhaps politically risky subject of battered women is the centerpiece of the story.
Basta worked briefly as administrator of the battered women's shelter in Great Falls, Montana. It was there that she learned to call the violence in her own family background what it was. Now she could give it a name -- "battered women." But existing efforts to protect and to salvage the lives of battered women and their children left Basta dissatisfied and angry. It takes almost more time and money to do the paperwork required for tax-exempt status for shelters than can be devoted to the needs of desperate families.
Basta first titled her book "A Sense Of Justice." She hoped to open a window on the general contempt for life that results in everything from unnecessary human abortion and family battering to unbelievable cruelty to animals. But "A Sense Of Justice" tried to address too many causes.
Seven years after resigning her position at the battered women's shelter, "Slide Down My Cellar Door" was ready to be published. It does not pretend to present all of the convoluted aspects of domestic violence, nor can it offer much more than an imaginative alternative to our present battered women's shelters. "Slide Down My Cellar Door" relates our human foibles in a way we can look at and learn from.
Basta is the mother of seven grown children and grandmother of eleven children ranging in age from eight months to twenty years. Two children and one grandson are deceased. Basta grew up in the foothills of Boulder, Colorado. Her parents are retired and living in northwest Florida.
"Slide Down My Cellar Door" is fiction and should be read as fiction. |
