Anne Leigh Parrish, who got her start as an author by winning a college-sponsored contest in Vancouver, Wash., has debuted her second novel. 

“Women Within” is a multi-generational story of three women whose paths cross at the Lindell Retirement Home. Constance Maynard, fierce, independent and proud, reflects on her long life promoting women’s rights through her career as a professor of history. Eunice Fitch, the perfect caregiver, is often unlucky in love, yet even in middle age refuses to give up searching for the perfect man. And Sam Clark is a young aide with a passion for poetry and small, beautiful things, but at war with her own large, ungainly physique.

The book’s publisher is Black Rose Writing.

Parrish, a Pacific Northwest native, graduated from the University of Colorado, then moved back to Seattle to attend graduate school at the University of Washington. After earning a degree in business, she realized her “first and only love was writing” and has pursued it “relentlessly,” she said.