LIVE OAK, Fla. — More than 70 years later, Naomi Everett is ready for her story to be told.

The 85-year-old O’Brien resident has written her first book “ShareCropper” with the hope of helping parents and children avoid some similar troubles.

“I think there’s something about the way I was brought up that really should be told to parents so that when they have a child and his whole personality changes, and the child acts afraid all the time, then they should look into it,” Everett said about her 135-page book that has been published by New York City-based Page Publishing that is available in book stores everywhere as well as online through Amazon or iTunes and Google Play.

“Well, that’s what happened to me.”

And that’s the story she tells in the novella based on her family’s life in Louisiana, although she has changed the characters’ names.

She did so to prevent some embarrassment for family members. That’s also the reason she waited so long to write the book. That, and fear of her father.

“I’ve had the thought all my life but I would never have done it when my father was alive,” she said. “We were all afraid of him. He was something else.”

Everett begins by telling the story of her father sexually assaulting her when she was 10 years old and the aftermath of dealing with the event, where her father attempted to kiss her but didn’t press further.

“That was a shock,” she said. “He was the type of parent, well both of my parents were, they didn’t hug and kiss their children. My daddy had never held me on my lap. He never put his arms around me and said ‘I love you’ or anything.

“He shocked me with that.”

The shock soon surfaced in the form of stuttering. Everett said she had never had a speech impediment before, but soon struggled to speak, especially when at home.

“All of a sudden I couldn’t talk,” she said, adding that she would make sure not to be left alone with her father again. “I just started stuttering and boy, it was like a curse had come over me. It went on and on and on.”

Everett, who moved to O’Brien after retiring in 1990, has already begun her second book, which she said is about her “mail order marriage” and the man she married to get away from her father.

There are plenty more stories to tell, too, although Everett isn’t sure how many more she’ll write.

“I’m too old,” she said. “I’m too old for all those books.

“I wish I had started earlier and just held on to them until the right time to have them published.”

But with her first book published, Everett said it seems others are more excited than she is.

Although she knows what would really excite her about “ShareCropper.”

“I just wanted to get it published,” she said. “Now if somebody wanted to make it into a movie, then I’d get excited.

“I wish that Oprah Winfrey would read it and put it into her Book Club. She was sorta raised up similar to the way I was. If she came across a book like that, she’d want to read it.”