Dani Bonner bio
Danielle Rose Brady was born in Oxford on November 7, 1985, to Edna-May and John David Brady. As an only child, she was given to friendships with imaginary playmates and spinning fantastic tales of her encounters with spiders, cats, and talking automobiles. This creative urge was quickly squelched by her strict and religious mother, who felt that "lying was a slap in God's face." Her mother had no intention of raising a "foolish child" or encouraging her daughter's "frivolous approach to real life."
The confines that her mother's philosophy imposed on Dani only served to egg her on all the more. By the second grade, she was infamous for outrageous and sometimes cruel jokes on her classmates, forcing her mother to often and rigorously discipline her and, ultimately, place her in a private school to "teach her some manners."
The one small light in her life was her relationship with her father, who adored his daughter and thought she was brighter than sunshine. They often conspired against Edna-May and defied her iron hand by playing hooky from school and work, even though nine times out of ten, they were found out and had hell to pay. At the age of twelve, Dani suddenly lost her father to a heart attack, leaving her to deal with her mother on her own with no true allies. To this day, Dani spends as little time as possible with her mother, who resides in Batesville.
Happily for Dani, another bright light entered her life in her freshman year at the University of Mississippi in the form of Zoe Chase (then Nancy Neidelmen). The two girls became fast friends and looked upon each other as the sisters they never had.
Though this friendship delighted Dani and Nancy, it caused only distress for their parents. The two girls, constantly in trouble for playing pranks, gave their parents many sleepless nights. The Neidelmens blamed Dani for her bad influence on Nancy, and Edna-May blamed Nancy for her ungodly influence on Dani. It was so bad that the parents couldn't even be in the same room without an argument breaking out. Both Dani and Nancy regarded this as a hilarious circumstance and did nothing to smooth over relationships between the parents.
After graduation, Nancy (Zoe) returned to her native New York, leaving a grief-stricken Dani to fend for herself. Though they spent a lot of time on the phone and exchanged emails and text messages regularly, it simply wasn't the same. Dani longed for the late-night chats of their school days and their mutual mischief-making.
Happily, about a year later, Dani met and fell in love with Ed Bonner, a carpenter with his own small business. Though not remarkably handsome or overly intelligent, he was a good, reliable man who worshiped Dani and treated her like a princess. When he asked her to marry him, she was thrilled and felt she had found her soul mate. She naturally had Zoe stand up as her maid of honor at her wedding.
Over the years, Dani's passion for her husband has cooled somewhat, but her loyalty and love for him hasn't. Even though her best friend, Zoe, insisted she could have done better, she felt she couldn't have. When the Bonner twins, Patsy and Cynthia, were born in 2012, Dani thought life couldn't be any better, until the day that her best friend, Zoe, decided to move to Oxford. Then, for Dani, life was perfect.
Dani is an excellent cook and has a good eye for design and color. One day she will get around to taking those painting lessons she is always talking about.
