Hagen says she heard the same warning as a happy-go-lucky child in Florida, Indiana, and, finally, Levittown.
She also recalls her mother's account of a 1983 incident:
"I would have been in first grade," Hagen says. "I was standing at the bus stop, about 20 feet from my front door where my mom was standing.
"As my mom tells it, she saw a man get out of a dark car and walk toward me so she screamed at the top of her lungs: Get away from my child!"
"I remember none of that," Hagen says. "But you're kind of blinded when you're growing up."
Hagen is on leave now from her teaching post, living, she says, "the life of a starving artist."
"The first day I was off the payroll, my dryer and my refrigerator broke and I totaled my car."
Still, she's at work on her next book - another nonfiction narrative, set somewhere in this country's past.
"The stories that interest me most have been lost to history," she says, "overshadowed by more famous events."
Contact Inquirer staff writer Dianna Marder at 215-854-4211, dmarder@phillynews.com, or @marderd on Twitter. Read her recent work at http://go.philly.com/diannamarder.
