An Unforeseen Life

If it s a boy, Bill Strong announced to a crowded courtroom in Louisville, Mississippi, I'll send up black smoke; if it s a girl, I'll send up white. A few hours later, white smoke was billowing from the Strong family chimney. This smoke determined by gender would come to define Mary Ann Strong Connell s life in ways she never could have expected. Neil White, publisher of An Unforeseen Life, said, Readers are going to love this story of loss, faith, tragedy, and perseverance. When Connell was eight, fire took the life of her younger brother. Connell blamed herself for the accident, and guilt became a motivator for the remainder of her remarkable life. On the pages of An Unforeseen Life, readers will share with Connell her experiences as she faced a different kind of firestorm when she became one of the first women practicing law in Oxford, Mississippi. The compelling scenes continue to unfold when Connell convinces the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan to move their march off the Ole Miss campus. Her readers will share in her pain when she is called as an adverse witness in the wrongful termination trial of football coach Billy Brewer, who had once been her classmates, and the exhaustion and difficulty of two NCAA investigations. There are moments of humor when she warns a first-year law student named John Grisham if you don t get serious, you ll never succeed at the practice of law. Connell s drive to defend those least able to stand up to the powerful led to a battle with Oxford s colorful mayor John Leslie (who took to calling her The Sewer Queen) and to embracing clients who paid her with a sack of coons. We witness the character growth of those around her, including her husband whose conservative beliefs about women began to erode as he saw her succeed. We applaud when she clandestinely enrolls in the Ole Miss law school while raising four young children, and also when she attends Harvard Law School for an advanced degree (alongside fellow classmate Barack Obama). An Unforeseen Life is a powerful memoir about a woman who embraced opportunity in spite of the facts a funny, touching account of a life most richly blessed, if sometimes in unexpected ways.