She knew in her bones she wasn’t overreacting...

…but when doctor appointment after doctor appointment ended with a shrug, Jule continued to feel it in the pit of her stomach that something was wrong with her children. What started as seizures in infancy became something far more relentless, a condition no one could diagnose, and few people believed it was as serious as Jule knew it was. The more she pushed for answers, the more alone she became, and the motherhood she’d imagined was replaced by something she never could have prepared for. Rosa Mystica: A Mother’s Mystery is about another parent’s struggle to convince the medical community that their child’s mystifying condition is serious and real.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Jule DeJager Ward is the author of La Leche League: At the Crossroads of Medicine, Feminism, and Religions, and co-author of Suffer the Little Children: Urban Violence and Sacred Space. She was a religious studies faculty member at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois, for 24 years. She is a past member of the National Board of the Christian Family Movement and active in the publication of study guides for family advocacy groups.

Active in the writers’ community of About the AuthorPortland, Oregon, she especially enjoys her engagement with an international group of writers formed following a summer workshop at the University of Iowa. This group of twelve writers has been together for over ten years. During the same ten years, Jule has written and published on her website seven children’s stories and six fables derived from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Rosa Mystica: A Mother’s Mystery was named a finalist in the Vine Leave 2025 International Voices in Nonfiction Competition.

Jule invites readers to contact her at julemagnes@gmail.com or follow her on https://julewardwrites.substack.com/. If you are interested in reading her short stories, you can find them at https://julewardwrites.com/ .