Change and Challenge: My Life After Thirty

Change and Challenge: My Life After Thirty is the sequel of Chance and Choice, My First Thirty Years (2007). It describes the birth of the author’s two sons in the 1950s and the change from her life as a London research biologist to motherhood in rural England. After emigrating to Birmingham, Alabama Joan faced the challenge of raising her sons in a segregated society. In 1963 the Staple family moved to Buffalo, NY; here Joan resumed her research, which involved the “creation” of living amoebas, as well as witnessing the evolution of a new amoeba strain. Coping with teenagers in the Sixties and starting her teaching career at a Jesuit college complete the story.