When Naamah McHarg sits down tomorrow to sign copies of her book, `Fear Not to Follow', it will be the culmination of her late mother's dream to record a personal history of her life and family.

Countless people have said, "I should write a book," and for many years Mrs. McHarg was one of them, but she was also a working mother with little time to spare for herself.

Growing up, she was aware that her mother had accumulated material for a projected book about her life, but somehow that was as far as it went. Then, following her mother's death, when Mrs. McHarg was going through her mother's papers, she discovered that chapters up to her daughter's second year of life had been written, in addition to the collection of notes, so she resolved that "some day" she would take up the story and complete it, not for publication but because she wanted her children and future generations to know something of their family history.

Decades passed without a word being written, then came the dawn.

"About six years ago I woke up one morning and realised that time was marching on, and I said, `This is something I absolutely have to do'," Mrs. McHarg says. "I don't know why, but from that point on I felt driven."

While Mrs. McHarg had no training as a writer, she had spent all of her working life in libraries, first in her native America, and then, following her marriage to Harry and resettlement in Bermuda, at Appleby, Spurling & Kempe, whose law library she set up and then ran on a full-time basis until recently. Now she is semi-retired and continues on a part-time basis.

With her mind made up, the librarian set about her project with a will. Every night after dinner, for the next two years, she sat at her computer letting her fingers flow over the keys, propelled by the memories in her heart. On average she wrote two or three pages a night until around midnight. Many times she fell asleep over her keyboard, sometimes with disastrous results.

"Once my hand rested on the `Delete' button, and I had to rewrite 67 pages," Mrs. McHarg says. "Fortunately, a friend was able to retrieve quite a few pages for me."

Then, in the middle of it all, her husband became ill and she had to stop writing for a while, but her resolve never faltered.

"There were times when I was very discouraged, but I was determined, come hell or high water, to finish it," the neophyte author admits. "There are so many people who are interested in family trees - who was born and died, and where, but when you have gone through all the research you end up with a bunch of names. To me, the real value is, `Who were they? What were they like?' et cetera. I want to know something about my ancestors as people."

In fact, through writing her book, Mrs. McHarg says she lived her life all over again.

"I had to to be able to write it," she says. "It is more than a `memories' book because it shows the progression of women in matters of marriage, divorce, employment, and how those things changed over the years between my mother's life and mine. You can see the progression during the last century. When my mother divorced my father it was just not done in those days, and employment was almost impossible."

`Fear Not to Follow' takes the reader through most of the twentieth century, focussing on two strong women and their turbulent times: Helen Knight (Mrs. McHarg's mother) and Naamah (pronounced Nay-ah-mah) whom the author has renamed `Samantha' throughout the book because it is more "reader-friendly".

Helen and Naamah are described on the dust cover as " `women of excellence' lost in tumultuous times". "With themes of love, betrayal, abuse, homosexuality, solitude, high-society and abandonment, the story shares their life experiences with candour, strength and grace," it says.

"Naamah McHarg has brought to life the many characters that shaped her existence and that of her mother, while clearly demonstrating the stamina and power women possess to move ahead..."

With so much to cover, it is not impossible to imagine that the author found herself committed to an uphill struggle, but she is quick to dispel such a notion.

"Everyone thinks it must be difficult to write a book, but I didn't have a problem because I was able to write from memory, and since I decided to write it chronologically, I just followed through the years," she explains.

While the completed first draft of her book was a relief, Mrs. McHarg also knew it was just the beginning.

"It may have been okay for my family, but it was certainly no great finished piece of work, so I took it to (the late) Patricia Calnan and asked her what she thought," she says. "She gave me some excellent advice, and I spent the next two years rewriting it. That is when the real work begins."

With "stage two" done, Mrs. McHarg then began researching a publisher, and narrowed her choices down to ten in areas where she thought there would be local interest in the US - i.e. Boston, New York and New England, and which would also be easily accessible for her from Bermuda. She then wrote to them all, enclosing sample chapters. Just one asked to see the entire manuscript, and the response was immediate: "We would be very interested in working with you on this."

"We discussed it, and last November I signed the contract with Chandler House Press, Inc. in Worcester, Massachusetts," the proud author says. "Most publishers take a year or more from the time you sign, but my book is printed and goes on sale here this week, as well as in the US. It is also in the US Library of Congress."

So how does Mrs. McHarg feel now that her 553-page legacy to her family is complete?

"When the crates of my books arrived here it was great," she says. "Of course, the younger generation don't get concerned until they are older, when there is nobody left to tell them things. That is why this was so important to me."

So will she write more books?

"No, this is it," she says firmly.

'Fear to Follow' is available at The Bookmart, and Mrs. McHarg will be there to sign books tomorrow from 12 noon to 2 p.m.