FROM THE AUTHOR,
HER HUSBAND...

People who knew her kept saying, "You must write a book about Marlene." "Please write a book about Marlene."

A confined upbringing in the deep south, marriage & motherhood,  life in the great cities of America that would become portals to East Europe and China where her love for God would give her courage to seize opportunity and face danger with her husband... She was a study in personal growth, and in the end, she looked back and found life simply glorious!

Clockwise from upper left: Marlene with her husband and three sons; sitting on a dragon in Shenyang; in her Hong Kong flat cooking dinner with Dale.

 
 I wasn't sure. But as I began to write, ordinary things added up to extraordinary. And with some real-life adventure to add in, it turned out to be a pure pleasure to write.

Marlene flourished in a femininity of courage, love, and noble sacrifice—qualities pronounced in God-focused womanhood. And she exhibited that marvelous feminine ability to experience great reward in returned love.

It's Just Been Glorious
The Storied Life of Marlene Smelser
by Dale Smelser
hardback, 362 pages

I have no copies left to sell.
However,
you can order the book online from the
Florida College Bookstore.
- J.S.

Whatever lessons are here, I have tried to let her actions, life, and words make her point. Young women can see in Marlene's story a joy that is never going to come from a secularism that recognizes little difference in the roles of women and men. Her life may well encourage other women about the glories of femininity and noble character. My hope is that her story might live on as it is given on such occasions as graduations, marriages, and childbirth to those whom the reader loves.

Mothers and wives, including preachers' wives, will undoubtedly find passages they identify with. But one need not be married to relish the story.

If the book can help young women choose the excellent and beautiful—if it can help people see what is so "glorious" in such things, as Marlene saw—my efforts will be well justified. Indeed, they have already been rewarded in merely recounting it all. —Dale