Myrian's Journal
Summer McGaha is an author from North Carolina. She has been storytelling for most of her life, but only really discovered it was her passion in 2006. She began writing an age-gap love story named The Adoption Elopement. The story grew for four years, by which point, she's changed the name to Myrian's Journal and after almost a decade, a new plot for the characters have begun to grow.
The story is about a 20-something man and a teenage girl discover romantic feelings for each other.
"Age Gap relationships became interesting to me and the complexities surrounding them. In 2007, I saw it being shunned more than being accepted, and I felt like it wasn't fair to judge a relationship solely on an age difference. Myrian's Journal was a way for me to examine questions I had about it." - explains the author her decision in an interview with The Crazy Mind magazine.
According to the 2013 American Community Survey, even though most heterosexual Americans (78-80 percent) choose partners who are about their same age when they marry for the first time (that is, within 5 years), many are not. In age-gap couples, men are more apt to have a younger than an older spouse, with 10 percent having a spouse who is six-to-nine years younger, and 5 percent marrying a woman 10 or more years younger.
Summer wrote an excellent piece of art in the young adult (YA) fiction genre with well crafted characters from the perspective of her generation. It's amazing to see the strong emphasis on emotions and personal experiences instead of approaching the topic scientifically or intellectually.
