Southern Ohio has always produced storytellers, but few carry the region’s quiet resilience and emotional depth quite like Pam Wightman. A Greenfield native, Wightman recently released her dystopian novel Infertility: Echoes of a Borrowed Life, a book that is already resonating with readers across the region and beyond.

For Wightman, coming home was the beginning of a new chapter. “Greenfield has always been part of my story,” she said. “I grew up with Southern Ohio values: hard work, resilience, and strong community ties. I spent about 14 years living away, but almost a year ago, I felt pulled to come back home. This community shaped who I am, and it is incredibly meaningful to now be launching my writing career here.”

The idea for Infertility: Echoes of a Borrowed Life began with a single question: What would happen if infertility was not a private struggle, but a global crisis? That question sparked a decade-long creative journey. “The concept started forming ten years ago,” Wightman explained. “But I committed to writing it seriously in the past couple of years. It evolved into a dystopian, end-of-the-world story exploring survival, identity, hope, and what it means to carry life forward both biologically and emotionally.”

While the subject of infertility is deeply personal for many families, Wightman is clear that her book is not a memoir. “It is speculative fiction,” she said. “I magnified a private struggle into a global one to explore how humanity might respond. At its heart, the story is about hope and resilience.”

Wightman’s decades of professional writing, from HR training materials to her management book Kindness Is Not a Weakness, gave her a strong foundation, but fiction required something different. “Writing dystopian fiction meant building a believable world while keeping readers emotionally invested,” she said. “It stretched me creatively, but finishing the manuscript was incredibly rewarding.”

She drew on universal emotions rather than personal events. “Like most writers, I draw from emotional truths: resilience, longing, perseverance. Those feelings helped shape the tone, but the world and events in the book are fictional.”

Southern Ohio’s influence runs quietly but powerfully through her work. “This region has a strong sense of resilience and community,” Wightman said. “That shows up in my characters: people who lean on one another, who fight quietly but fiercely.”

Her sister Tina played a particularly meaningful role in the book’s creation. “For nearly ten years, she read chapters as I wrote them,” Wightman shared. “When I questioned myself, she encouraged me. When I finished the manuscript and she read it cover to cover, she cried, partly because the story is emotional, but also because she was proud I had seen it through. Having someone believe in you while you are still building something makes all the difference.”

Since its release, Infertility: Echoes of a Borrowed Life has seen strong early support. “In less than a month, the book has sold over 70 copies, has steady Kindle reads, and has even been placed in a school library and a small business shop in Greenfield,” Wightman said. “The community support has been humbling.”

She hopes the novel encourages readers to think about compassion on a broader scale. “In real life, infertility is often a quiet struggle,” she said. “By turning it into a global crisis in the book, readers can explore empathy from a new angle.”

Perhaps the most surprising discovery for Wightman was what she learned about herself. “I realized I am capable of more creative depth than I knew,” she said. “This was the first time I allowed myself to step fully into creative storytelling. It was empowering to see that the structured, professional writer and the imaginative storyteller can coexist.”

And she is not stopping anytime soon. “I am working on additional projects in different genres, including another novel exploring relationships and memory. Writing has become an important part of my life.”

Wightman hopes readers see her debut novel for what it is: a fictional story rooted in universal human questions. “This book is about hope, survival, and what sustains us when the world shifts,” she said. “I am grateful for the support of Southern Ohio and excited to continue writing stories that spark conversation.”

As Greenfield continues to uplift its own, Pam Wightman stands as a reminder of what can happen when a writer leans into her roots and lets a story grow from the place that shaped her.