Beauty and Truth

In the compelling memoir
Beauty and Truth, Vera Chappelle shares
her personal journey beginning in 1938 at a creek in Moscow,
Texas, traveling through five continents, and ending in San
Francisco, California.

Born as the
youngest of seven children who lived with her parents and
grandparents on a farm surrounded by cotton and peanut
fields, Vera details her father's childhood on this same
farm about thirty or so years earlier. His life was filled
with racism and violence as hundreds of insecure white men,
whose ignorance prevented them from embracing his family,
attempted to make their lives miserable. Vera Chappelle
moved from her grandpa's farm to Houston, Texas when she was
five years old. Her family eventually relocates from Texas
to California. Vera chronicles how she continued pursuing
the creative passions that made her heart sing-the piano,
the violin, the choir, Shakespeare, Dickens, and art. Even
as trouble brewed at home, Vera chronicles how she was able
to emerge from pain and heartache as a child to find peace
and joy as an adult.

As Vera's life
story circles back to today, she offers a deeply personal,
but incredibly meaningful, life lesson with others-no matter
whether we are white, black, yellow or brown with eyes that
are slanted, straight, or curved in shape-we are all here to
love each other.