Most of my instructors in high school were pretty good, and some were downright comical without meaning to be, but my freshman English teacher was stupendous. I’ve never had a teacher as magnificent as she was, before or since. Her name was Celina Rios (Miss Rios to her students), she was young and beautiful, and every jock in school signed up for her English class just because they wanted to look at her. 

But to those of us who were serious about academia…well, that was a different story altogether.

By the end of the first week of school, the jocks had all begged out of her class, and most of the girls just wanted to be her. Those girls didn’t last very long, either. The students who remained were scared but determined – and all I wanted to do was pass. By the end of my freshman year, without my even realizing it, she had prodded my niggling interest in journalism – which became a passion later in my life, set in motion my love for editing and good grammar, and created a monster when it came to argument, debate, and conflict.

For the next three years, I fought for Miss Rios’ English class – and got it, by hook or by crook, every year. Then, when I was a senior, I qualified for her accelerated class, and I was really proud of that. But that’s when the real work started.

Several months before the end of the school year, she announced that our senior term papers would be half our final grade – no extra credit, no curve, no help – and suggested that we begin working on them as soon as we could. She gave us a list of a few hundred books – some modern, some classic, some even banned – and told us to pick one book for a report due at the end of the year. Then she passed out several pages of questions we had to answer in this report, and gave a final instruction:

“Don’t even think about using Clift Notes. They won’t help you.”

I don’t remember why I chose Leon Uris’ novel EXODUS, but I did – and I didn’t worry about it. It was my senior year, after all, and a girl has to play. Besides, how hard could a book report be? There were so many neat things going on and I had plenty of time…

Of course, I waited until two weeks before the term paper was due before I got started – and discovered to my shock that EXODUS was nearly 900 pages long. I curled up with this heavy-duty novel (in both substance and weight) on a Friday night and didn’t close it until late afternoon on Saturday. I read that book straight through, literally unable to put it down.

I’ve always loved to read, but I’d never immersed myself in a story the way I did when I settled in with this one. I’d never experienced a story that way in my life. It unfolded in my brain like a technicolor movie. I could see every character, large and small. They were all so real to me. I felt every emotion, even emotions I’d never experienced before, and walked through the Jewish history as if I was familiar with it, which I certainly wasn’t. Reading EXODUS for the first time was the most important turning point in my life.

The second was when I began to answer Miss Rios’ questions: What is the main theme of your book? Who is the main character? Secondary characters? The main plot? The sub-plots? How would your book be different if the antagonist was the protagonist instead of the other way around? How would your book be different if you had no main secondary character?

And on…and on…and on. There were at least ten pages of questions.

I had to dissect EXODUS. I had to analyze, at seventeen years old, what Leon Uris, one of the greatest novelists in the world, was thinking when he wrote the most magnificent book I’d ever read. I had to figure out what made the story tick, what made the characters tick, and I had to decipher what made both those things work together.

What an exercise in writing! In all the classes I’ve taken since then, in college and elsewhere, I’ve never delved into a novel as completely as I did then. For two days and three nights I worked, practically non-stop…not because it was an important assignment, not because it was half our final grade, but because I was fascinated. I couldn’t stop. I had to do it.

By the time I turned in my term paper, nearly paralyzed with terror, I knew I had to write. I knew it’s what I was born to do. I had to write stories with meaning, with purpose, with heart and truth. When I received my grade (a 99% because I left out a comma) and read Miss Rios’ comment in the margin, I knew I was capable of it. 

She wrote, “If this is your work, it is excellent craft.” I still have this term paper in my memory box of items that mean the most to me – now, more than 50 years later.

I don’t think I’ve ever been so thrilled and honored to be almost-accused of plagiarism. I even went into her classroom and thanked her. But far more important than that is now, finally, with two novels of my own behind me, I’m able to acknowledge the woman who woke me to the power of the English language. 

This is the teacher to whom I owe the greatest debt of gratitude for setting me on the path that’s given me so much happiness and fulfillment.