The Desert Willow | Volume 2 - Spring 2026
The Winners of the 2026 Pioneering Spirit Writing Contest
In our second issue of The Desert Willow, we will be sharing the winners of our PWC Centennial Year Founders Contest: Pioneering Spirit. You can read more about the contest by reading the guidelines. Please subscribe for free so you don’t miss our next issue, where we will share work from members chosen by our editorial staff.
In This Issue:
1st Place Essay: Billie and Hawk by Summer Cherland
Honorable Mention Essay: Doctor Frau by Bibi Khalsa
1st Place Poem: Inheritance by Rita Hanner-Ward
Honorable Mention: Dragon Fruit by Mary Elizabeth Evans
Billy and Hawk
By Summer Cherland | 1st Place Essay
As far back as she could remember, Billie was certain of two things. She wanted to be a teacher, and she would follow Hawk anywhere. And Hawk, he planned to take her from Arkansas to California. His people were there already, scattered like chicken feed across the state. The older folks were first to go, chasing railroad money they said was “stacked in train cars.” The younger generation followed, spurred by magazine ads for cotton pickers. Hawk kept dozens of their letters in a paper sack under his bed.
Billie and Hawk jumped the broom a few weeks after Billie finished her teaching degree, just six days before Hawk left for California. She’d worn her wedding dress to see him off. A robin’s egg blue shift nipped at the waist, a wide-brimmed felt hat, and gloves with dainty embroidered peach flowers nestled into the scalloped wrists.
“Before you know it,” he giggled, “we’ll be swimming in the Pacific. Sunshine all the time.”
That’s why, when Hawk’s letter arrived a few weeks later, it took her by surprise. She heard her voice go up when she read the word aloud.
“Phoenix… Phoenix?”
It seems that when Hawk’s train refueled in Phoenix, he’d decided to stay. His letter said the passengers were told to enjoy the day and return at sunset, but Hawk never went back. “Phoenix,” he said, was “good enough for me.” He was taken by Eastlake, an upscale Black neighborhood abandoned by whites when the river flooded too many times. “The lake was drained fifteen years ago. There’s a pretty park here now.” He wrote, “Someday we’ll get us a house here, but for now I can’t much afford Eastlake.”
He wrote about walking down Washington Street, lined with big, dark trees he’d never seen before, their pewter trunks twisting into strands like rope. Tiny, dense leaves clustered into mounded canopies with flat bottoms. He stood under one, imagining he was underwater, a big green boat floating above. He asked a passerby what that tree was called.
“That’s a mesquite tree.”
Hawk rolled the word around in his mouth, “muhss-keet.”
The letter told Billie he “got a job picking cotton for some newspaper man.” Folded in the envelope was some money and directions for Billie’s voyage to Phoenix. She smiled as she read, reminded of treasure hunts they used to make for each other as kids.
The Southern Pacific was noisy. Only the sounds of iron wheels meeting iron track drowned out the relentless conversation in the cramped passenger car. On the train, Billie befriended a woman her own age, already bouncing two babies in her lap.
“You traveling alone?”
“Yes,” Billie said, pulling a loose fiber from the worn leather seat before her. The tan thread dangled against her wrist.
“You best stay close to us. You’ll be like auntie to these two. Where you heading?”
“Phoenix,” Billie replied.
“Phoenix? You got people in Phoenix?”
“No. I don’t know anyone there. Moving to be with my sweetheart, Hawk.” Billie self-consciously added, “His letters are right here in my hatbox.”
The young mother beamed at Billie. “You be each other’s people.”
The early June heat was the first to welcome Billie to Phoenix. She tucked her hair, windblown and stiff with dust, into her hat. The fingertips on her gloves were darkened from travel. She looked around, fantasizing about Hawk running through the crowd, waving his hat. She thought she saw him leaning casually against a wall, but stiffened when she caught a stranger’s eye instead. Billie careened, twisting to find Hawk among travelers. She sat down on a bench, recoiling in pain when her forearm settled on the red-hot armrest.
“Ouch!”
“You okay, honey?”
Billie turned to find a middle-aged couple out for a stroll. Tiny sunbeams streaked through the gauzy hemline of the woman’s plum dress. The man wore a beige suit with a long, skinny tie and held a tweed cap in his hand. Drips of sweat gathered along his hairline.
“I just got here from Arkansas. And my…” Billie stuttered, not used to calling Hawk her husband. “…My man ain’t here to get me yet.”
“What’s your man’s name?” The gentleman asked.
“Hawk.”
The couple exchanged a look of uncomfortable recognition. A long silence blanketed the evening shadows.
“Miss,” the lady sat down. “We knew your Hawk.”
“You know Hawk?”
“Yes ma’am. Hard name to forget. He use’ta ride by our house on his way to pick cotton at the Heard farm.”
Billie felt bewilderment and shame competing to claim her every breath. Had Hawk abandoned her? Caught a train for California after all?
“Do you know where I can find him?”
Billie looked down to see the backside of a well-lotioned hand patting her dingy gloves. Embroidered flowers transformed from glamorous to silly in one foggy blink.
“Your Hawk…” the man said, “he was drowned in the canal there last week.”
Silence.
Billie’s eyes clouded over, and all she could see was rain.
The three of them remained like that for a long time. A woman with her hands in the lap of a young lady, a man standing behind a bench. No one in a hurry to leave, nobody wanting to stay. Billie’s shock wore her like a veil. The swirl of confusion that entered her mind was silent, ominous. Finally, the woman’s voice cut through the whirlwind. “You best come with us.” She gently gathered the fraying cord of Billie’s loved hat box in the fold of her hand. The man clutched Billie’s green suitcase. “Come on now,” the lady said firmly.
Their names were Mavis and Charlie Winston, Sr. They lived on Broadway Road. They put Billie up in a tiny matchbox bedroom off their kitchen. Mavis said that originally, the room was a pantry when they built the place, but “times got tough. We don’t have that much food.” Billie leaned over the bed, bracing herself in a standing sit-up. Her eyes zeroed in on a splay of little green dots squiggling into curlicue paths among tiny pink rosettes, swirling across the entire quilt. She couldn’t find where the dots began or ended. Her arms collapsed, and she lay face down, closing her eyes on a strange, delicate pillow.
Every morning, Billie woke to the sounds of Mavis and Charlie fixing breakfast. Charlie loved orange juice, Mavis preferred coffee. Billie started out hiding in her room, an awkward, lonely stowaway. But after a few weeks, she began inching into their morning rituals. Mavis in her black dress, tightly tying a white apron around her waist. Charlie perpetually suited, reading The Phoenix Tribune. Mavis waited by the door for her neighbor’s Cadillac to lumber up to the house, then she darted out to squeeze into the idling car with other ladies from the neighborhood. Charlie left soon after, walking west toward Roosevelt School.
Billie was lost, deserted in a desert town, probably overstaying her welcome, without a penny to buy a return ticket – not like she was going back to Arkansas. Sometimes she puttered in, out, and around the Winston house, admiring the fuchsia bougainvillea that vined their way into the gutters. She hugged the air when the breeze delivered whiffs of sweetness from the orange trees blossoming down on Old Southern Road.
She started riding along with Mavis and the ladies in the Cadillac. The car drove north on 7th Street across the sandy river bottom, through downtown, and into the posh, sparkling, grassy neighborhoods of the Encanto district, where Mavis and her friends cleaned houses. Along the way, Billie counted every mesquite tree they passed.
Months went by.
One day, Charlie shared at dinner, “We’re losing a teacher. Going to need someone to teach reading, writing, maybe music.”
Billie felt an unexpected flash of enthusiasm. “I have my teaching degree.”
Charlie’s eyes lit up. “No kidding! Come tomorrow and meet the principal.”
The next day, as Billie and Charlie walked west on Broadway, a large green truck with wooden bedrails rumbled by. The back was crammed full of men – young, old, Black, Mexican – on their way to the cotton fields. One man grinned at Billie, flashing her a thumbs-up. Billie’s return smile caught her off guard.
“I wouldn’t figure this for a Broadway,” Billie said, hoping Charlie hadn’t noticed her moment of flirtation. “I always pictured big lights and skyscrapers.”
“Different Broadway,” Charlie replied. “Used to be owned by a Mr. Noah Broadway. He was a slave owner and a Confederate soldier.”
Billie shook her head, refusing to believe the South had followed her west.
The school principal, Mr. Jean, sized Billie up immediately. “You have a degree?”
“Yes, sir,” Billie said.
“How long you been in town?”
Billie could barely believe her answer, “Six months.”
“You leaving anytime soon?” Mr. Jean asked.
Billie paused, then replied, “I’d like to stay.”
“Great,” said Mr. Jean. “We have a reading and writing class without a teacher. The current girl is having a baby and won’t be coming back. You’d also teach music after school. Sound good?”
Billie nodded.
“Let’s go see your classroom.”
Billie followed Mr. Jean down a tall, wide hallway lit from above by smoked-glass fixtures. This was nothing like the country school she and Hawk had attended as kids. She looked down and realized she was wearing her robin’s egg dress. She hadn’t even given it a thought when she got ready that morning.
They entered a large classroom completely walled with leaded-glass windows. Billie placed two hands side by side within one pane. “There must be 30 panes per window,” she whispered, picturing children spotlighted by golden darts of sunlight shining through. She peeked into a supply closet and fidgeted with the iron brackets clasping white cabinets shut. She tapped the balls of her fingertips on the teacher’s oak desk.
“What do you think?” Mr. Jean’s voice brought her back. “Could you like it here?”
Billie did like it there. She took the job. She stayed for thirty years. Billie poured her life into that classroom at Roosevelt School. Her first pupils were the Black and Mexican children of farmers and cotton pickers, some of whom may have worked with Hawk during his last months on earth. Many lived miles from the school, far flung throughout the south side of Maricopa County.
Thirty years into her tenure, the Roosevelt School District opened a new school on 7th Street. Veteran teachers like Billie were encouraged to transfer to help get the new school on the right track. Billie’d spent most of her career in that first classroom, dancing among sunrays streaming through leaded glass. Perhaps it was time for a change. She called the superintendent one night to volunteer.
“I have a different idea,” the superintendent replied. “Would you consider being the principal?”
Like it had when she’d read Hawk’s letter all those years ago, Billie heard her voice go up with one word. “Principal?”
Billie knew there weren’t any other Black women principals in RSD, maybe not even in the whole state of Arizona. She turned the idea over in her head, remembering. A train car with leather seats, a blazing hot bench, the Winston’s kitchen, peach flowers on scalloped gloves. Little stamps of risks she took once, leading her here.
“Billie,” the superintendent added, “We don’t have a mascot for the new school. Any ideas?”
Billie didn’t hesitate. “How ‘bout the Hawks?”
Doctor Fraue
by Bibi Khalsa | Honorable mention essay
The phone rings at 3:30 AM, just two hours after the doctor returned from attending a birth. She fumbles for the receiver and hears the voice of an Amish farmer asking her to come right away because his wife is in labor. With a groan and a sigh, she drags herself out of bed and drives her station wagon to the farm. The farmer greets her cheerfully and tells her it is almost time for him to feed and milk the cows. After checking the pregnant woman, who is lying in bed, the doctor confirms that the birth is not imminent. She is ready to leave and return home for some much-needed sleep, but the farmer insists that she stay because the baby could come at any time. She suspects that he wants her to keep an eye on his wife and manage the household while he attends to his duties in the barn. Soon, the family’s other children begin to emerge, and the doctor finds herself changing diapers and helping them dress while their mother lies in bed issuing orders in Dutch. Hours later, a nine-pound baby boy finally arrives. After the mother and baby are determined to be fine, the farmer has one more request for the exhausted doctor. On her way home, he asks her to deliver a note at a neighboring farm, asking them to send their daughter to help out while his wife recovers. The doctor finally makes it home to fall into bed for a few hours of sleep before her office hours begin, or the phone rings with the next urgent call.
Dr. Grace Kaiser practiced medicine for twenty-eight years in New Holland, Pennsylvania. To her many Amish and Mennonite patients, she was known as Dr. Frau. She was born Esther Grace Helsel in 1924 and grew up on a small farm in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. Grace knew from a young age that she wanted to be a doctor, and in an era when most women were housewives, teachers, or nurses, her father encouraged her to pursue her dreams. She graduated from the College of Chestnut Hill in Philadelphia and was one of two women to graduate from Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.
Grace married Peter Kaiser during her third year of medical school, and after her internship, they moved to New Holland in Lancaster County. They bought a large house built in 1865, which served as her doctor’s office and their family home. Peter found employment at the office of the New Holland Machine Company. Since women doctors were uncommon in the early fifties, she was uncertain if the conservative members of this largely Amish and Mennonite community would accept her. Many of them still traveled by horse and buggy and didn’t have telephones or electricity in their homes. They supported themselves by growing tobacco and selling milk from their dairy farms. These families often had children numbering in double digits, so delivering babies became a major part of the doctor’s practice.
Grace familiarized herself with her patients’ customs and beliefs and treated them with kindness and respect. She braved torrential downpours, blazing heat, blinding snowstorms, and viscous dogs to travel to the farmhouses that dotted the landscape. After some initial skepticism, the locals welcomed her into their homes and entrusted her with their medical care. She and her family grew to be valued and beloved members of the community.
In her book “Dr. Frau, A Woman Doctor Among the Amish,” she describes the countryside, the farmhouses, and the people in vivid detail. Her tone is light and entertaining as she recounts the circumstances of each case and the families she encounters. Grace doesn’t portray herself as a saint or a martyr as she shares the challenges she faces in her practice. She admits hating to leave her warm bed to answer calls in the middle of the night and, at times, being overwhelmed by the demands of her work. However, her deep concern and regard for her patients always outweigh the difficulties she encounters.
She writes that she expects cash payment for her services and doesn’t barter, but patients shower her with extra produce from their gardens and homemade delicacies from their kitchens. These generous gifts help feed her growing family; she and Peter raise four children while she continues her medical practice. She recounts an experience with one Amish family during her first pregnancy. The patient, Naomi, fears her husband, Simon, will disapprove of having a pregnant woman doctor deliver their child. When Grace arrives on a sweltering summer night, Simon greets her coolly as she squeezes past him with her protruding belly to tend to his laboring wife. Naomi’s mother, who is there to help, comments that it seems strange not to have a male doctor at the birth. But she accepts Grace’s presence, and after a sweaty labor, the baby arrives, the first girl in a family with four boys. Grateful to finally have a daughter, Naomi exclaims, “And it took a woman doctor to do it!”
Simon laughs, “Guess we’ll have to have you come again if we want another girl.”
Another dramatic birth story takes place on a rainy March night. A Mennonite farmer calls to say his wife is in labor. The doctor drives over flooded roads, causing her brakes to almost fail, but she makes it in time to deliver the baby. This family has a telephone in their house, and Grace’s husband calls to tell her that another family needs her to deliver their baby. They live twenty-five miles away, and Grace sets out in her rain-soaked vehicle but doesn’t get far before it dies. She flags down a passing semi-truck, and the friendly driver takes her to Lancaster Hospital. There, she finds an intern named Bayer and begs him to drive her to the farmhouse. He agrees to take her in his antique Model A Ford and is eager to witness his first home birth. When they finally arrive after a slow, bumpy ride, the farmer and his wife admonish the doctor for being late. The husband proudly announces that he helped his wife deliver twin girls, both “bottom end first.” Grace is impressed because breech births are notoriously difficult. She delivers the placenta while the intern examines the babies. After a long, grueling night, Bayer drives her home. She’ll have to deal with her abandoned car tomorrow. Since she didn’t arrive in time for the second birth, she doesn’t send a bill, and they never offer to pay her.
Dr. Kaiser undoubtedly delivered many more babies before she retired in 1978. She and her husband moved to Arizona in 1980. There, she began her second career as a writer. She took creative writing courses at ASU, joined the Phoenix Writers Club, and served as its president from 1987 to 1988. In the acknowledgements for her book, “Dr. Frau, A Woman Doctor Among the Amish,” published in 1986, she thanks PWC members, Dorothy Lykes and Marguerite Noble, for their inspiration, guidance, and assistance. She also expresses her gratitude to the Monday Critique Group. She published two more books about her life: “Detour” in 1990 and “Growing Up Farm” in 2006. In 2008, she was the first female physician to be honored by the Lancaster Osteopathic Health Foundation. Grace H. Kaiser died in 2010 at the age of eighty-six and was buried in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Although she might have resisted the label of “pioneer,” Grace Kaiser clearly exemplifies a pioneering woman. She defied conventional expectations in the 1950s to follow her passion and become a doctor. Furthermore, she lived and worked in a highly insulated community where she found acceptance through her compassion, dedication, and skill as a physician. Her books provide a fascinating glimpse into the Amish culture and her extraordinary life. And, notably, the Phoenix Writers Club inspired and encouraged her to share her story with the world.
Inheritance
by Rita Hanner-Ward
The desert air lingers in my throat, where my heart beats steadily with the monsoon rains. I gaze across this wind-swept oasis of concrete and steel. From raw earth to risen city, I walk the path they carved, thinking of my sisters who thrived in the Valley of the Sun. Blood sacrificed. Their sweat shaped the land. My words shape the memory of their pioneering spirit— desiring more as they transformed their sacred space into an enlightened state. Its forward motion moving with the speed of atoms. Their courage echoes in a held breath as the desert air lingers in my throat—still.
Dragon Fruit
By Mary Elizabeth Evans
Sing me, O muse Of women who have hearts that grow outside their bodies That blossom maroon and heavy pregnant with meaning on a cactus Despite the shimmering heat Do not blister Only ripen with yearning Sing me of the women Who seek their hearts Who leave little pink bedrooms and family portraits and small ponds Hiding empty chests behind tea cups and magazines The women who drive all night and eat in roadside thai restaurants Knowing the only thing they can do The women who wander open eyed into the desert Carrying only open hands Hearing only their own lush desires In the heavy velvet night Pick their fruit Harvest their lives And bite
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About the Phoenix Writers Club
In 1926, the Phoenix Writers Club was founded by a feisty group of women journalists who weren’t allowed into the men’s journalism club, so they began their own writing club, the Phoenix Writers Club.
Over its long history, the Phoenix Writers Club grew to be not just for women and not just for journalists, but for all interested in the craft of writing. Our mission is to provide a space where writers and readers can join together, discuss, and grow their skills and knowledge in the craft of writing.
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Visit our website, phoenixwritersclub.com, to learn about our monthly meetings, writers’ critique groups, and involvement in the greater Arizona arts and writing communities.
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