Fascinating Memoir Written By South Windsor Native

SOUTH WINDSOR, CT — It was 1971, and times were changing for young people in America and the rest of the world. Richard Nixon, in the third year of his presidency, signed the 26th amendment to the Constitution, lowering the legal voting age to 18. Walt Disney World opened in Florida, and Greenpeace was founded. Two years after a half-million people gathered on a farm in Bethel, N.Y. for "three days of peace and music" at the Woodstock Music & Art Fair, the top of the music chart was dominated by performers as diverse as James Taylor, Rod Stewart and the late Janis Joplin. A year following the fatal shooting of four unarmed Kent State University students at a protest on campus, the Pentagon Papers were leaked to the New York Times, showing the U.S. government had been lying to its citizens about the horrors taking place during the Vietnam War.

Back in Connecticut, the former farming community of South Windsor was in the midst of a staggering population growth, with a 64 percent increase in residents counted in the 1970 census. From less than 10,000 inhabitants in 1960, there were now more than 15,000 people calling the town their home. As far as 16-year-old South Windsor High School student Sharon Kendall was concerned, however, time was standing still.

Due to the fact of being a girl, Sharon's Catholic parents believed she should become an office worker after graduation, and live at home until she married and had children. Rejecting that idea as old-fashioned thinking, she decided to join the ever-growing counterculture, dropping out of school and heading across the country. Upon arrival in California, however, she was thrown into an adult world for which she was unprepared, and embarked on a precarious journey.

She lived for a while at a commune, and began to realize a developing spirituality seemingly at odds with her Catholic upbringing. She persevered, she grew, she came back to finish high school and she wound up marrying and having children after all. Her journey to get to that point, however, is a fascinating story, full of ups and downs, which she has brilliantly captured with publication of her first memoir.

Now known as Sharon Dukett, her 321-page effort, No Rules: A Memoir, is available via Amazon and in selected area bookstores. A brief summary accompanying the listing on Amazon says, "In this colorful memoir, Sharon reflects upon the changes that reshaped her during the 1970s women's movement, and how they have transformed society’s expectations for girls and women today—and, through it all, shares moments of triumph, joy, love, and awakening."

Her literary debut was published by She Writes Press, and is a finalist in the Autobiography / Memoir category in the 2020 International Book Awards.

Even long after her transcontinental saga detailed in the book, Dukett has compiled an interesting range of career choices: cocktail waitress, clothing designer, information technology consultant and 14 years with the State of Connecticut Judicial Branch, including a three and a half year stint as Deputy Director of Application Support and Development before retiring in 2017.

Dukett said she began working on the book more than two decades ago, starting with jotting down memories on a pad of lined paper and eventually penning an entire draft in the 1990s. She then put it away in a drawer and forgot about it until meeting another woman who was writing, who convinced her to transfer her notes onto a computer and continue the project.

She attended a conference of the International Women’s Writing Guild, then joined a writers' group. However, her busy technology career forced her to put her writing on hold until she retired; she resumed the book in 2017.

Her original draft of 170,000 words had to be cut nearly in half. She took an online course in memoir writing, whose instructor was Brooke Warner, publisher of She Writes Press. Warner agreed to work with Dukett and publish her memoir.

Asked her hopes for her initial publication, Dukett said, "I want readers to experience what it was like to live in those times, and the transformation that came about as a result of discovering feminism and growing my own strength."

She has already begun working on a second book. "It's a thriller novel that takes place in the near future, when climate science has been declared to be illegal propaganda in the U.S., and activists are detained and disappear," she said.

A complete interview with Dukett from a recent radio broadcast may be heard here.

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