Joplin senior residents publish second collaborative murder mystery

JOPLIN, Mo. — The final product of a special year-long project arrives just in time for Christmas. The second installment of “The Old and the Beautiful” murder mystery novel was shipped to Wildwood Senior Living in Joplin. The book holds a special meaning for the facility. Four of its residents helped contribute to the book and can now call themselves published authors.

Staff at Arrow Senior Living, which is Wildwood’s parent company, came up with the idea to write a collaborative book during the pandemic, to keep seniors’ minds active. The first installment of “The Old and the Beautiful” was written by 48 residents across five states. For the second book, you may recognize one of our local contributors.

“You really can’t put it down. I think you start reading it and you think, ‘well what’s going to happen next?’ So, it’s really a good book, and I really enjoyed it,” said Carol Parker, who helped write the book.

“It was fun, but, you know, when you have 29 different communities writing and you get what they have written, you look at that and you think, ‘they killed off that character that I was just writing about?’ You know, you never know exactly what’s going to happen. So, we had to try to make a cohesive storyline there,” added Donna Birdsong, Co-Author.

The Old and the Beautiful series including the original and season two is available on Amazon.

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