Barbara Frances

Barbara Frances draws on theatre, teaching, screenwriting, and family history in her fiction. Like I Used To Dance is a Texas family novel set in 1951 and issued by Positive Imaging. Its household centers on Grace and Bud, whose marriage and children are affected by pressures carried quietly across generations. Frances has explained that family stories helped shape the book, while her education in English and theatre informed its dramatic construction. She taught English and drama before working in screenwriting, experience that suits a narrative built from sharply observed relationships and scenes of domestic strain. Members of the Wolanski family confront memory, loyalty, and the price of long-held secrecy. Frances does not use the period as decorative background; its expectations define what her characters can say, conceal, or change. Like I Used To Dance joins historical setting with a close study of people trying to understand inherited tensions. That combination gives the family’s private reckonings a clear social and historical frame.