Although they were in general favorably reviewed, she became disillusioned, in the 1980s, by developments in the publishing world, gave up fiction writing, and turned to academia.
[7] This bio-historical poem, unique to American letters, was published in book form by the Historical Society of Rockland County in 2004 and is currently in its third printing.
[1] Fabend's curiosity about the Dutch colonial period in New York and New Jersey was sparked at first by her learning that her father's family had been instrumental in the settling of Rockland and Bergen counties, beginning in the 1680s.
[9] Felicitously, her interest coincided with and was mightily reinforced by the New Netherland Project, a major translation effort undertaken beginning in 1974 by Dr. Charles T. Gehring in Albany, NY, under the aegis of the State of New York.
In 2017, she received the Alice P. Kenney Award from the New Netherland Institute for her contributions to scholarship related to the Dutch colony in North America.
[3] She was elected the first President of the Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History, located in Hudson, NY, in 2014.
(Of Only a Paper Life, Cambridge University English professor Richard Gooder of Clare College wrote, “It remains a little masterpiece.