A Different Drummer

About the Book

“Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul.” Those wise words from Emily Dickinson gave strength to author Edna Wilkinson the day she first looked into the eyes of her tenth child, a boy named Todd, who was born with Down’s syndrome. For years, the writer jotted down her secret feelings, hopes and fears, bringing them all together in this short novel that will transport you into the daily life of a young mother and her mentally handicapped son. Most important of all, “A Different Drummer” will remind parents raising a Down’s syndrome child that they are not alone.

About the Author

It all started with “Autumn in the Country”, a poem Edna M. Wilkinson wrote while attending high school in 1939. After it was published in the “Napanee Beaver”, Wilkinson went on to become an award-winning writer whose inspirational articles and poems have appeared in numerous magazines. A mother to ten children, much of her writing has been inspired by her family life. Born in Canada in 1925, she met and married R.A.F. serviceman Frank Wilkinson, who was stationed in Kingston, Ontario during the Second World War. She moved with him to England in 1944, and spent three years in his hometown of Maryport, Cumberland, before returning to Canada, where they raised their family on the same land on which Edna was born and raised near Napanee.