Starting in January, newspapers across North Carolina will be publishing a condensed, serialized, 16-chapter version of the book Taffy of Torpedo Junction, thanks to the author’s daughter, Marcia Wechter Kass and the University of North Carolina Press. In classrooms and homes, through this statewide reading initiative, readers will become acquainted or reacquainted with Taffy who lived on the Outer Banks during World War II and witnessed the torpedo attacks along North Carolina’s coast.

To better understand any book, readers will often learn about the author. The NC NIE Web site links to sites with information about the author, Nell Wise Wechter. Marcia Wechter Kass, the author’s daughter, adds to that information in the following interview. Teachers (and parents), if you or your students have additional questions for Marcia Wechter Kass, pass those along.

AN INTERVIEW with MARCIA WECHTER KASS

1. What motivated your mom, Nell Wise Wechter, to write Taffy of Torpedo Junction?

Thank you very much for the opportunity to reminisce about my mom and her writing.

Nell Wise was a born storyteller, and, as soon as she could put pen to paper, her imagination appeared in print. She observed and absorbed everything around her in the early days of the 20th century. She saw her father, Enoch Wise, go out in his shad boat everyday to make a living and her mother, Edith Best Wise, work the garden and tend the chickens (and kill snakes!) to turn that “living” into meals.

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