Is This a True Story?

Yes, all of the events in the book Sandy My Name are true. Much of her dialogue was written in Sandy’s own words, indelibly seared into my brain.

To maintain the privacy of those in the story, I changed names and some settings to disguise identities. The only two real names in the book are Sandy’s and mine. 

But when Sandy changed her last name during our trip to Colorado, she also changed her first name. Since the name Sandy was so significant to the book, I didn’t want to change it. And it could be confusing to change the name of the main character in the middle of the story. So I kept her name as Sandy. I had already given her a different last name to protect the identities of her birth parents.

Notes and records I kept along the way helped me remember the sequence of events and conversations. At times I had to fill in dialogue, staying true to the intent, with what could have been said. In order to streamline the narrative, I used a few composite characters and compressed some of the action. Most events in the book are unaltered in any way.