Cambridge resident Gloria Rojas recently announced publication of her first book, “Fire Escapes.”

Rojas was born in New York City in 1939. She grew up in The Bronx and spent nine years as an elementary and junior high school teacher before accepting an opportunity to work as an ESL (English as a Second Language) instructor on the city’s Channel 13. Spending time in the television studio gave her an opportunity to watch the taping of the “The World at 10” news show, an experience that led her to pursue a career in broadcast journalism.

After completing the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Rojas started at NYC’s Channel 2 News as the city’s first Latina television journalist. In the course of her career, she spent time at ABC, NBC and CBS news, and distinguished herself as an excellent street reporter.

In her spare time, she amused herself by writing down some of the unique experiences along her life’s journey, many of which appear in this book. She retired and moved to Cambridge in 2012, and contributed to The Dorchester Banner from 2014 to 2018.

“Fire Escapes” is called “a fictional memoir” for good reason. Seeing her own life in youth as being fairly conventional, in “Fire Escapes” Rojas re-invents herself as Justine Trinidad, whose mother died in childbirth and was raised in poverty by a bitter grandmother.

In this book, Justine looks back on her troubled, motherless youth while working in a newsroom as a broadcast reporter. Rojas brings it all together as an interesting blend of an imagined life and vignettes culled from real events.

The following is an excerpt from the book: “Simpson Street, my street, lined with brick and brownstone tenements, was decorated with old ladies sitting at the limestone stoops and permanently draped with graceful fire escapes and stairs that climbed up the four-story facades. The fire escapes were the verandas, porches, balconies, and decks of the street’s society, a place to gossip, read, grow flowers, and watch the movement of life below.”

The book has been published on Amazon.com and is available as a paperback or as a Kindle e-book.