Irene Blea is a New Mexico native who earned her Ph. D. in Sociology from the University of Colorado-Boulder. Before her retirement from California State University-Los Angeles, she was an accomplished author of several textbooks, poetry, academic and popular articles. Blea retired as a Tenured, Full Professor and Chairperson of Mexican American Studies. Two of her 7 textbooks, Toward a Chicano Social Science (Praeger, 1981), and La Chicana and the Intersection of Race, Class and Gender (Greenwood, 1983), are classics in her field. Blea has written and published one play and much poetry. After her retirement she published family fiction and memoir. Suzanna is the title of Blea’s first novel in a trilogy about a thirteen-year-old girl married off to a thirty-two-year-old man in 1920’s New Mexico. The second novel, Poor People’s Flowers, continues Suzanna’s story upon arrival in Colorado. The third, Beneath the Super Moon, Suzanna is set free to live life freely after a life predetermined by others. This transformation occurs during the lunar eclipse. Suzanna still strives to reunite with her children, but not before she confronts the darkness and the sorrow of her past. Dr. Blea is an award-winning academic and a New Mexico Humanities Council Scholar.