‘A unique individual’: How Sacramento’s Jeane Westin found success as an author late in life

For every 40-under-40 rapid success story, there’s a Jeane Westin.

Westin, who lived much of her life in the Sacramento area and died April 24 at 91, didn’t publish her first book until she was 44. That began a book-writing career spanning the rest of her life, with Westin publishing at least 17 more books and her agent sending royalty checks until Westin’s final months.

“We always used to talk about the fact that Grandma Moses was famous for doing her painting and writing and things like that in her 80s,” said Westin’s nephew Norm Dawson, a supervising public defender for Sacramento County. “I think my Aunt Jeane finished her last book at like 84, 85.”

From cryptographer to writer

Westin was born Jeane Eddy in Oklahoma City on July 3, 1931, the oldest child of Henry Eddy, who did oil field work, and Anna Eddy, a homemaker.

Times were tight for the family, which soon included Westin’s younger sister Reno and brother Richard. So at 13, she attempted to join the U.S. Army, telling a San Francisco Examiner reporter in 1986, “I was fascinated with the idea of soldiering.”

Westin couldn’t serve in World War II because of her age. She eventually enlisted at 19 in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. Dawson said his aunt served as a cryptographer during the Korean War, with stints at the Pentagon and Allied headquarters in France. Westin would never lose interest in cryptography.

“Even in the last few weeks of her life, she was still working the cryptograms out of The Bee,” said daughter Cara Westin, a retired Sacramento Police lieutenant.

Jeane Westin moved to Sacramento after her military service, marrying husband Gene Westin in 1962 after he met her uncle in a car club. Cara, an only child, was born in 1963.

When her daughter was young, Jeane Westin wrote freelance stories. She authored her first book, “Making Do: How Women Survived the ’30s” in 1976, interviewing 160 women who had lived through the Great Depression.

“When you are a young child, the character and the accomplishments of adults are invisible to you,” Westin told a Sacramento Bee reporter in 1976. “But listening to the stories of these women has revealed how real they were, how similar their problems were to mine and how differently they handled them.”

According to Chicago-based agent Danielle Egan-Miller, Westin wrote 14 books that her agency, Browne & Miller Literary Associates, represented and sold.

Westin’s other books for Browne & Miller included: “Finding Your Roots,” a 1977 book about genealogy; “Love & Glory,” a World War II historical novel published in 1986 and optioned for a CBS miniseries that didn’t materialize; and a series of romances set in the Restoration and Tudor eras, culminating with “The Spymaster’s Daughter” in 2012.

For the historical romances, Westin researched meticulously and even visited England.

“She was kind of a tough lady, but a very smart person and I think a really wonderful writer,” said Egan-Miller, who noted that she mailed Westin’s last royalty check to her in March.

Westin produced high-profile work, with Cara Westin remembering her mother appearing on “The Phil Donahue Show” and meeting actors such as Vincent Price and Gene Wilder in the green rooms of shows.

Jeane Westin continued to write after her stature faded and her books no longer commanded press tours. Aside from her work with Browne & Miller, Westin wrote at least three other books, self-publishing her final novel, “Queen of Thieves,” as an e-book in 2016.

For the sake of animals

Westin enjoyed a 53-year marriage to Gene Westin, living in different parts of the Sacramento area with him over the years.

Gene Westin did public information work while serving in the U.S. Navy as a young man and later published a newspaper for SMUD before retiring in 1983. Jeane Westin told the Roseville Press-Tribune in 1991 that her husband was very supportive and had begun to play tennis seriously, which gave her ample time to write.

In time, Gene Westin’s tennis group got to know the couple, calling them Mrs. Jeane and Mr. Gene to distinguish them. One member of the group, 84-year-old Nora Rodriguez of Sacramento, remembered Christmas parties at a McKinley Park home the Westins moved to in the early 2000s. “She just entertained magnificently,” Rodriguez said.

Westin could be modest about her literary career.

“Anytime she walked down the street, you would never know that she had all these accomplishments,” said another member of the tennis group, former UPI reporter Chris Morgese, 79.

Former Sacramento City Councilman Steve Cohn, who lives two doors from Westin’s McKinley Park home, wasn’t aware of her writing. “I just remember her as a positive, very friendly person who was very proud of her daughter being police lieutenant,” said Cohn. He added he would now check out Westin’s writing.

Westin was also an advocate for the welfare of animals. She became president and CEO in 2000 of Sacramento-based United Animal Nations, according to a news report at the time. Following Sept. 11, 2001, members of a subordinate nonprofit, the Emergency Animal Rescue Service traveled to New York City to help injured, abandoned or trapped pets.

“Some of us would probably walk out of New York City with our German shepherds on our backs if we had to,” Westin told The Bee at the time. “But some people simply could not cope with leaving their homes and taking their animals with them.”

Following her husband’s death in 2015, Westin moved to River’s Edge, a nearby senior community. There she got to know a group of women who enjoyed watching wildlife and called themselves “The Squirrels,” sometimes organizing movie nights together.

Jean Brown, 92, remembered Westin as “such a unique individual.” “At our age, you don’t replace that sort of friendship,” Brown said. “And I will miss so much about her.”

Westin’s family held a memorial service on Friday.