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back a stack of books they needed. I wended my way past the roses, through some ancient ground cover toward the garage—a structure with a rental apartment above. I slid the heavy door open and it was like walking into a lesbian archeology dig. I found hundreds of cartons, holding thousands of copies of the 13 still-in-print Sarah Aldridge novels.
    By that afternoon I’d learned that although Anyda had been penning unpublished lesbian novels since she was a teenager, both she and Muriel spent the 1950s and 60s concentrating on their careers and their clandestine gay life. Anyda was an attorney for the World Bank by this time and Muriel was executive secretary to the president of the Southern Railroad. Both women had enormously high pressure jobs and they loved the work they did.
    But by the early 70s, both Anyda and Muriel had health issues. Muriel had lung problems and her blood pressure was off the charts. Anyda was told she had a life-threatening heart condition and the doctor ordered mandatory retirement. So in 1972, Anyda (age 60) and Muriel (age 58) headed to Rehoboth full-time. While they both had wanted to continue their careers, at least the reluctant lawyer would now have the time to write her lesbian novels.
    â€œYou know, I had been writing novels all along, and a few of the novels I wrote years ago I did present to publishers,” Anyda told me, “but they were turned down flat. I realized I was not reaching my potential because I was not writing about gay subjects. I had a gay mentality, but I was writing non-gay novels, so naturally they had fatal flaws,” Anyda acknowledged in her somewhat scholarly voice. “When I came to retire I thought, ‘Well, this is the opportunity.’”
    Anyda took it and ran. She started writing stories with fiercely feminist themes, strong women protagonists and happy endings. But she and Muriel firmly believed there could be no way to publish such “scandalous” material without disguising the author’s identity by using a pen name. Anyda chose Sarah Aldridge , a name that sounded vaguely historical and a tad British—by this time Anyda had a bona fide affinity, from both her ancestry and her travels, for Great Britain. She scribbled her novels—rich in both historical detail and romance, in long-hand on yellow legal pads, filling up dozens at a time. Along the way, Muriel, a voracious reader herself, would go over the drafts, making comments or raising questions.
    Then, Anyda would dictate them to Muriel for typing. Sometimes Muriel waded through the long-hand drafts herself, muttering and cursing at Anyda’s scrawl, as she transcribed. Writing was the easy part; getting published only a dream.
    â€œI wouldn’t know where to begin,” I said, helping to pack up copies of Aldridge titles A Flight of Angels and The Nesting Place . “You were so closeted, how did you even know therewere readers out there?”
    â€œWe had The Ladder ,” said Muriel.
    I had heard of the publication, a newsletter of the early lesbian rights organization The Daughters of Bilitis. It was the first American magazine published by lesbians for a lesbian readership. I had read about it and the amazing women, Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, homosexual rights pioneers, who were behind both the organization and its magazine. The Ladder was probably the very first written lifeline thrown to a scattered and mostly isolated population of lesbians all over the country.
    Anyda submitted short stories to the publication, marking the first appearance of the Sarah Aldridge byline. And through The Ladder Anyda and Muriel met Barbara Grier, the publication’s last editor.
    By 1972, the magazine had folded, but Grier still had the mailing list—an incredibly valuable commodity of over 3,000 entries. Anyda, encouraged by Muriel, decided she would publish the first Sarah Aldridge novel, The Latecomer , herself. “I told Muriel we should