Follow Your Dreams

Follow Your Dreams is the sequel to Dancing Alone Without Music and traces the life story of Josephine "Jo" Gilpin, an African-American woman of color who rises from an impoverished childhood, daughter of a single parent, to become Kentucky's most successful entrepreneur and an anonymously-generous philanthropist.



Jo's mother Cynthia was a participant in America's early 1960's Civil Rights struggle in Alabama when she was barely out of high school. Without a family of her own, when she became pregnant from a brief consensual liaison with a Northern Freedom Rider from Detroit, Cynthia journeyed north to seek help from two young white Freedom Riders from Kentucky she'd met at a protest rally.



Cynthia was taken in by the family of one of the young men and given a home for her and her newborn daughter. She was also given a job that enabled her to live independently and raise her daughter.



Jo excelled academically, and upon graduation from college was given a small loan from her benefactor, Jennings Eldridge, to start her own cosmetics company to create products specifically for women of color. Eldridge, a character from Dancing Alone Without Music, mentored Jo, and from him she learned the value of keeping personal journals of her life's journey.



Another character from Dancing Alone Without Music, author Marla Jo Taylor, learns of the journals and gains permission to read them. She persuades Jo to collaborate on a non-fiction book based upon the journals to inspire others, particularly women, to "follow their dreams" just as Jo did.



Jo experiences more than her fair share of challenges and disappointments, both personal and professional, but always manages to rise above them and become stronger, helping others along the way. Except for one challenge that she's powerless to overcome.



Her company diversifies and she becomes wealthy, and she uses her wealth to help others, especially at-risk children in her beloved home state.



With Marla Jo's assistance, the journals of Jo Gilpin are transformed into an inspirational self-help book entitled My Way, and that book appears in its entirety at the end of Follow Your Dreams.