In the 1960s, Ann McCutchan grew up in the space coast town of Titusville, Florida, as Apollo 11 was preparing to land on the moon. Five years after the moon landing in 1969, her parents died in a car accident.

"After that, I avoided the area," says the retired associate professor of English. "But when I turned 60, I sought to go back, to examine and reflect on the times, the place, the community, and who I, and we, had been."

McCutchan, who also was a doctoral student in music at UNT, writes about that time in Where's the Moon? A Memoir of the Space Coast and the Florida Dream (Texas A&M University Press).

"That era not only affected my family's life," she says, "it was interesting in its own right."