Getting There: Fifteen years of my life in columns (Volume 1)

Columnist Mary Fortune writes as if her hair is burning. Her thoughts pour out in delightfully syncopated sentences between frantic gulps of air. There should be an asterisk after each idea, like a breath mark in a piece of music. The result of all this ventilating is an unfiltered (even giddy) honesty about the joys and heartaches of being a modern working mother who aches with love for her two little sons and her good husband, Jim. Since starting her My Life: 30s column in the Chattanooga Times Free Press about 10 years ago, Mary has given up life as a meagerly paid journalist for a life as a corporate communicator. As a result, her monthly columns have an authentic quality that comes shockingly close to pure truth, as if the ideas have been tumbling around in her brain until they are completely smooth and sincere.