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My Family and Other Seedlings: A Year on a Dorset Allotment
by Lalage SnowA few years ago Lally Snow moved to a Dorset village with her husband and three small children, having spent over a decade as a war photographer, foreign correspondent and film maker living in Kabul. She covered the conflict there as well as other wars from Gaza to Eastern Ukraine, and Iraq.In the late winter of 2021-22, Lally decided to rent an allotment, despite having only a rudimentary knowledge of gardening. She was starting from scratch and setting herself the dual challenge of growing an allotment at the same time as growing a family.This is a heart-warming, wry and at times tearful account of Lally's travails as a mother and novice allotment holder, counterpointing horticultural progress with the perils of parenting. Along the way she reflects on the drudgery of English rural domesticity after a professional life chasing war and adventure, the history of the allotment since Saxon times, and the wonderful moment when gardening becomes fun rather than just feeding a family.
My Family and Other Seedlings: A Year on a Dorset Allotment
by Lalage SnowA few years ago Lally Snow moved to a Dorset village with her husband and three small children, having spent over a decade as a war photographer, foreign correspondent and film maker living in Kabul. She covered the conflict there as well as other wars from Gaza to Eastern Ukraine, and Iraq.In the late winter of 2021-22, Lally decided to rent an allotment, despite having only a rudimentary knowledge of gardening. She was starting from scratch and setting herself the dual challenge of growing an allotment at the same time as growing a family.This is a heart-warming, wry and at times tearful account of Lally's travails as a mother and novice allotment holder, counterpointing horticultural progress with the perils of parenting. Along the way she reflects on the drudgery of English rural domesticity after a professional life chasing war and adventure, the history of the allotment since Saxon times, and the wonderful moment when gardening becomes fun rather than just feeding a family.
My Family and Other Strangers: Adventures in Family History
by Jeremy HardyWhen Jeremy Hardy decided to explore his ancestry it was, in part, to get to the bottom of his grandmother Rebecca's dubious claims that the family descended from a certain 17th-century architect and that, more recently, Jeremy's great-grandfather was a Royal bodyguard. Other legends ranged from the great aunt who ran illegal hooch during Prohibition to the wronged Victorian servant girl who bore an illegitimate Hardy, not forgetting the family's rightful claim to a large country estate. Wild stories aside, Jeremy sets out to such diverse locations as the Croydon one-way system and the hostile waters around Malta in order to find traces of recognisable family traits and a sense of how he came to be. With wry humour and a keen eye for the absurd and the frustrating, Jeremy takes us on a by turns funny and moving journey into the world of family ancestry. My Family and Other Strangers will be enjoyed by anyone who has tried to decipher the 1901 census records, or simply wishes they too had asked their grandparents more about their lives.
My Family Divided: One Girl's Journey of Home, Loss, and Hope
by Diane Guerrero Erica MorozBefore landing a spot on the megahit Netflix show Orange is the New Black; before wow-ing audiences as Lina on Jane the Virgin; and before her incredible activism and work on immigration reform, Diane Guerrero was a young girl living in Boston. One day, while Guerrero was at school, her undocumented immigrant parents were taken from their home, detained, and deported. Guerrero's life, which had been full of the support of a loving family, was turned upside down.Reflective of the experiences of millions of undocumented immigrant families in the United States, Guerrero's story is at once heartbreaking and hopeful.
My Famous Evening: Nova Scotia Sojourns, Diaries, and Preoccupations
by Howard NormanMaster storyteller Howard Norman draws on more than 30 years of visiting Nova Scotia for this remarkable book of selective memories. Combining stories, folklore, memoir, nature, poetry, and expository prose, the chapters of My Famous Evening may be seen as intersecting facets of reminiscence; there are certain refrains, themes, and preoccupations and I placed birds into as many of the book's nooks and crannies as possible. His goal: to portray the emotional dimensions of his experience. This book offers a delightful, witty, and characteristically quirky take on a curious and beguiling region. Read the story of Marlais Quire, a young woman who scandalously left her home in Nova Scotia in 1923 to travel to New York in an ill-fated attempt to attend a public reading by Joseph Conrad. Enjoy the delightful Birder's Notebook, a collection of stories about the Mi'kmaq cultural hero, Glooskap, and an account of Leon Trotsky's 1915 visit to Halifax, after a year in exile in New York, on his way to the October Revolution. For Norman, Nova Scotia is a place that provides a deep calm but also a sudden noir of the heart.
My Faraway Home: An American Family's WWII Tale of Adventure and Survival in the Jungles of the Philippines
by Mary Mckay Maynard[From the back cover:] "When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and attacked the Philippines, eight-year-old Mary McKay, her parents, and several other American families fled into the jungle for what they thought would be a short evacuation until they could be rescued by the Navy. Their wait lasted two years. My Faraway Home is the fascinating story of how they survived. Encountering typhoons, fires, and cobras, they lived on dwindling stores of canned food, traded with loyal Filipino villagers who wouldn't betray their hideout, and learned to improvise their own shoes (from rubber tyres), soap (from pig fat), and other necessities. Like the classics The Diary of Anne Frank or Empire of the Sun, My Faraway Home gives a fresh perspective on war through a child's eyes."
My Faraway One
by Sarah GreenoughSelected Letters of Georgia O'Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz volume 1, 1915 - 1933
My Farming Life: Tales from a shepherdess on a remote Northumberland farm
by Emma GrayAS SEEN ON BBC TWO'S HIT TV-SHOW 'THIS FARMING LIFE''A heartwarming tale of life on the land' Alan Titchmarsh'There's love and loss, challenge and adversity, but above all it's warm, insightful and inspiring' Helen Skelton'Will inspire any reader to look at the countryside - and all those who work there - with newfound appreciation' Jimmy Doherty 'Uplifting, charming and beautifully written' Adam HensonEmma Gray was just twenty-three when she moved to an isolated farm in Northumberland, becoming Britain's youngest solo shepherdess. In the seasons that followed, Emma fell in love with its rolling fields, surrounding forest and sturdy farmhouse, tending her sheep and training her dogs - and even found romance.But when Emma finds herself suddenly alone again, heartbroken and recovering from a serious accident, she wonders if her isolated existence is still such a sensible idea. Even if she recovers, how could she make a proper living on Fallowlees Farm?In her heartwarming book, Emma tells the story of how she picked herself up and expanded her cattle herd, added more horses to her menagerie, and became one of the country's most successful breeders and trainers of Border Collies - unexpectedly discovering true love and lasting happiness along the way.Written with warmth and humour, My Farming Life is a joyous celebration of nature and community, and a delight for anyone who's ever dreamed of living closer to the countryside.
My Farming Life: Tales from a shepherdess on a remote Northumberland farm
by Emma GrayAS SEEN ON BBC TWO'S HIT TV-SHOW 'THIS FARMING LIFE''A heartwarming tale of life on the land' Alan Titchmarsh'There's love and loss, challenge and adversity, but above all it's warm, insightful and inspiring' Helen Skelton'Will inspire any reader to look at the countryside - and all those who work there - with newfound appreciation' Jimmy Doherty 'Uplifting, charming and beautifully written' Adam HensonEmma Gray was just twenty-three when she moved to an isolated farm in Northumberland, becoming Britain's youngest solo shepherdess. In the seasons that followed, Emma fell in love with its rolling fields, surrounding forest and sturdy farmhouse, tending her sheep and training her dogs - and even found romance.But when Emma finds herself suddenly alone again, heartbroken and recovering from a serious accident, she wonders if her isolated existence is still such a sensible idea. Even if she recovers, how could she make a proper living on Fallowlees Farm?In her heartwarming book, Emma tells the story of how she picked herself up and expanded her cattle herd, added more horses to her menagerie, and became one of the country's most successful breeders and trainers of Border Collies - unexpectedly discovering true love and lasting happiness along the way.Written with warmth and humour, My Farming Life is a joyous celebration of nature and community, and a delight for anyone who's ever dreamed of living closer to the countryside.
My Farming Life: Tales from a shepherdess on a remote Northumberland farm
by Emma GrayAS SEEN ON BBC TWO'S HIT TV-SHOW 'THIS FARMING LIFE''A heartwarming tale of life on the land' Alan Titchmarsh'There's love and loss, challenge and adversity, but above all it's warm, insightful and inspiring' Helen Skelton'Will inspire any reader to look at the countryside - and all those who work there - with newfound appreciation' Jimmy Doherty 'Uplifting, charming and beautifully written' Adam HensonEmma Gray was just twenty-three when she moved to an isolated farm in Northumberland, becoming Britain's youngest solo shepherdess. In the seasons that followed, Emma fell in love with its rolling fields, surrounding forest and sturdy farmhouse, tending her sheep and training her dogs - and even found romance.But when Emma finds herself suddenly alone again, heartbroken and recovering from a serious accident, she wonders if her isolated existence is still such a sensible idea. Even if she recovers, how could she make a proper living on Fallowlees Farm?In her heartwarming book, Emma tells the story of how she picked herself up and expanded her cattle herd, added more horses to her menagerie, and became one of the country's most successful breeders and trainers of Border Collies - unexpectedly discovering true love and lasting happiness along the way.Written with warmth and humour, My Farming Life is a joyous celebration of nature and community, and a delight for anyone who's ever dreamed of living closer to the countryside.
My Fat Dad
by Dawn LermanFrom the author of the New York Times Well Blog series, My Fat DadEvery story and every memory from my childhood is attached to food...Dawn Lerman spent her childhood constantly hungry. She craved good food as her father, 450 pounds at his heaviest, pursued endless fad diets, from Atkins to Pritikin to all sorts of freeze-dried, saccharin-laced concoctions, and insisted the family do the same--even though no one else was overweight. Dawn's mother, on the other hand, could barely be bothered to eat a can of tuna over the sink. She was too busy ferrying her other daughter to acting auditions and scolding Dawn for cleaning the house ("Whom are you trying to impress?").It was chaotic and lonely, but Dawn had someone she could turn to: her grandmother Beauty. Those days spent with Beauty, learning to cook, breathing in the scents of fresh dill or sharing the comfort of a warm pot of chicken soup, made it all bearable. Even after Dawn's father took a prestigious ad job in New York City and moved the family away, Beauty would send a card from Chicago every week--with a recipe, a shopping list, and a twenty-dollar bill. She continued to cultivate Dawn's love of wholesome food, and ultimately taught her how to make her own way in the world--one recipe at a time.In My Fat Dad, Dawn reflects on her colorful family and culinary-centric upbringing, and how food shaped her connection to her family, her Jewish heritage, and herself. Humorous and compassionate, this memoir is an ode to the incomparable satisfaction that comes with feeding the ones you love.
My Father and Atticus Finch: A Lawyer's Fight for Justice in 1930s Alabama
by Joseph Madison BeckThe story of Foster Beck, the author's late father, whose defense of a black man accused of rape in 1930s Alabama foreshadowed the trial at the heart of To Kill a Mockingbird. As a child, Joseph Beck heard the stories--when other lawyers came up with excuses, his father courageously defended a black man charged with raping a white woman. Now a lawyer himself, Beck reconstructs his father's role in State of Alabama vs. Charles White, Alias, a trial that was much publicized when Harper Lee was twelve years old. On the day of Foster Beck's client's arrest, the leading local newspaper reported, under a page-one headline, that "a wandering negro fortune teller giving the name Charles White" had "volunteered a detailed confession of the attack" of a local white girl. However, Foster Beck concluded that the confession was coerced. The same article claimed that "the negro accomplished his dastardly purpose," but as in To Kill a Mockingbird, there was evidence at the trial to the contrary. Throughout the proceedings, the defendant had to be escorted from the courthouse to a distant prison "for safekeeping," and the courthouse itself was surrounded by a detachment of sixteen Alabama highway patrolmen. The saga captivated the community with its dramatic testimonies and emotional outcome. It would take an immense toll on those involved, including Foster Beck, who worried that his reputation had cast a shadow over his lively, intelligent, and supportive fiancé, Bertha, who had her own social battles to fight. This riveting memoir, steeped in time and place, seeks to understand how race relations, class, and the memory of southern defeat in the Civil War produced such a haunting distortion of justice, and how it may figure into our literary imagination.
My Father and Myself
by W. H. Auden J. R. AckerleyWhen his father died, J. R. Ackerley was shocked to discover that he had led a secret life. And after Ackerley himself died, he left a surprise of his own--this coolly considered, unsparingly honest account of his quest to find out the whole truth about the man who had always eluded him in life. But Ackerley's pursuit of his father is also an exploration of the self, making My Father and Myself a pioneering record, at once sexually explicit and emotionally charged, of life as a gay man. This witty, sorrowful, and beautiful book is a classic of twentieth-century memoir.
My Father at 100
by Ron ReaganFebruary 6, 2011, is the one hundredth anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth. To mark the occasion, Ron Reagan has written My Father at 100, an intimate look at the life of his father-one of the most popular presidents in American history-told from the perspective of someone who knew Ronald Reagan better than any advisor, friend, or colleague. As he grew up under his father's watchful gaze, he observed the very qualities that made the future president a powerful leader. Yet for all of their shared experiences of horseback rides and touch football games, there was much that Ron never knew about his father's past, and in My Father at 100 he sets out to understand this beloved, if often enigmatic figure who turned his early tribulations into a stunning political career. Since his death in 2004, President Reagan has been a galvanizing force that personifies the values of an older America and represents an important era in national history. Ron Reagan traces the sources of these values in his father's early years and offers a heartfelt portrait of a man and his country-and his personal memories of the president he knew as "Dad. "
My Father Before Me: A Memoir
by Chris ForhanAn award-winning poet offers a multi-generational portrait of an American family--weaving together the lives of his ancestors, his parents, and his own coming of age in the 60s and 70s in the wake of his father's suicide, in this superbly written, "fiercely honest" (Nick Flynn) memoir.The fifth of eight children, Chris Forhan was born into a family of silence. He and his siblings learned, without being told, that certain thoughts and feelings were not to be shared. On the evenings his father didn't come home, the rest of the family would eat dinner without him, his whereabouts unknown, his absence pronounced but not mentioned. And on a cold night in 1973, just before Christmas, Forhan's father killed himself in the carport. Forty years later, Forhan "bravely considers the way he is and is not his father's son" (Larry Watson), digging into his family's past and finding within each generation the same abandonment, loss, and silence in which he was raised. Like Ian Frazier in Family or Frank McCourt in Angela's Ashes, Forhan shows his family members as both a part and a product of their time. My Father Before Me is a family history, an investigation into a death, and a stirring portrait of growing up in an Irish Catholic childhood, all set against a backdrop of America from the Great Depression to the Ramones. Marrying the literary scope of memoirists Geoffrey Wolff and J.R. Moehringer with the intensity of family novels like The Corrections and We Are Not Ourselves, My Father Before Me is the kind of epic, immersive memoir that comes along once in a decade.
My Father, Frank Lloyd Wright
by John Lloyd Wright"An anecdotal reminiscence of America's chief living genius by his son -- short, unconventional, amusing and on the whole revealing." -- Book Week.Frank Lloyd Wright is widely regarded as the twentieth century's greatest architect -- an unconventional genius who transformed both residential and commercial building design with his concept of "organic" architecture. During a long and productive life, Wright designed some 800 buildings, received scores of honors and awards, and left an indelible imprint on modern architectural theory and practice.In this charming, readable memoir, Wright the architect and father comes to life through the vivid recollections and firsthand knowledge of his son. John Lloyd Wright characterizes his father as "a rebel, a jolt to civilization, whose romantic theme -- purposive planning and organic unity in inventing and combining forms -- is an epoch in the architecture of the world." His unique view of the "epoch" will intrigue architects, students, and all who admire the work of this visionary and uncompromising spirit. An added attraction of this volume is the inclusion of the complete text of William C. Gannet's The House Beautiful, an extremely rare work designed and printed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
My Father, His Daughter
by Yaël DayanA life of one of Israel's greatest heroes, as seen through his daughter's eyes Moshe Dayan was one of the greatest military leaders in Israel's short history. A child of the first kibbutz movement in British Palestine, he went on to lead Israel to victory in the 1948 War of Independence and to liberate Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War. Dayan was not only a soldier but a politician, an archaeologist, and a larger-than-life figure who helped shape the state of Israel. In My Father, His Daughter, Yaël Dayan, who herself served in the Israeli Parliament, shares an uncensored look into her father's life and her own conflicted relationship with him. With poignancy and candor, Dayan creates a profound yet nuanced profile of her father. She relates his strong national pride, his boldness in dealing with other world leaders, and his troubles at home to his disintegrating marriage and multiple affairs. As revealing as My Father, His Daughter is of the man behind the myth, it is also a snapshot of a loving relationship between Yaël and Moshe Dayan, and of a daughter's admiration and respect for a complicated but loving father.
My Father is a Book: A Memoir of Bernard Malamud
by Janna Malamud SmithBernard Malamud was one of the most accomplished American novelists of the postwar years. From the Pulitzer Prize winner The Fixer as well as The Assistant, named one of the best "100 All-Time Novels" by Time Magazine-to mention only two of the more than a dozen published books-he not only established himself in the first rank of American writers but also took the country's literature in new and important directions.In her signature memoir, Smith explores her renowned father's life and literary legacy. Malamud was among the most brilliant novelists of his era, and counted among his friends Philip Roth, Saul Bellow, Theodore Roethke, and Shirley Jackson. Yet Malamud was also very private. Only his family has had full access to his personal papers, including letters and journals that offer unique insight into the man and his work. In her candid, evocative, and loving memoir, his daughter brings Malamud to vivid life.
My Father Joachim von Ribbentrop: Hitler's Foreign Minister, Experiences and Memories
by Rudolf von RibbentropIn this memoir, the son of Nazi Germany&’s foreign minister looks back on his life, examining their relationship and his father&’s role in World War II. On 16 October 1946, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Hitler&’s wartime Foreign Minister, was executed at Nuremberg, convicted on four counts including deliberately planning a war of aggression and war crimes. In this first English language edition of his memoirs, Rudolf von Ribbentrop candidly describes his relationship with his father when he was the German Ambassador in London and during the war years. Von Ribbentrop was an often-isolated figure among the Nazi elite. In his final report from London, von Ribbentrop informed Hitler that he was convinced Great Britain would fight for its position in the world. He went on to play a key role forging the short-lived pact with Stalin&’s Soviet Union. Far from being uncritical, the author sets out to paint an objective picture of his father&’s role. His unique position sheds light on the unfolding dramatic events leading up to, and then the execution of, the Second World war. While the author briefly describes his personal experiences including his war service with the SS, it is the insight this work provides into top level decision making at the heart of the Third Reich that will appeal most to both historians and laymen.
My Father Left Me Ireland: An American Son's Search For Home
by Michael Brendan DoughertyNational Review senior writer Michael Brendan Dougherty delivers a meditation on belonging, fatherhood, and nationalism, through a series of letters to his estranged Irish father.The child of an Irish man and an Irish-American woman who split up before he was born, Michael Brendan Dougherty grew up with an acute sense of absence. He was raised in New Jersey by his hard-working single mother, who gave him a passion for Ireland, the land of her roots and the home of Michael's father. She put him to bed using little phrases in the Irish language, sang traditional songs, and filled their home with a romantic vision of a homeland over the horizon. Every few years, his father returned from Dublin for a visit, but those encounters were never long enough. Devastated by his father's departures, Michael eventually consoled himself by believing that fatherhood was best understood as a check in the mail. Wearied by the Irish kitsch of the 1990s, he began to reject his mother's Irish nationalism as a romantic myth.Years later, when Michael found out that he would soon be a father himself, he could no longer afford to be jaded; he would need to tell his daughter who she is and where she comes from. He immediately re-immersed himself in the biographies of firebrands like Patrick Pearse and studied the Irish language. And he decided to reconnect with the man who had left him behind, and the nation just over the horizon. He began writing letters to his father about what he remembered, missed, and longed for. Those letters would become this book.Along the way, Michael realized that his longings were shared by many Americans of every ethnicity and background. So many of us these days lack a clear sense of our cultural origins or even a vocabulary for expressing this lack--so we avoid talking about our roots altogether. As a result, the traditional sense of pride has started to feel foreign and dangerous; we've become great consumers of cultural kitsch, but useless conservators of our true history. In these deeply felt and fascinating letters, Dougherty goes beyond his family's story to share a fascinating meditation on the meaning of identity in America.
My Father, My President: A Personal Account of the Life of George H. W. Bush
by Doro Bush KochWhen George H. W. Bush asked Doro to write this memoir, she contacted hundreds of his friends and associates; conducted scores of interviews with dignitaries including Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, and General Colin Powell; tapped the memories of family members, including her mother, her four brothers, and of course, her father himself; and collected information from the former president's never-before-released files. "Now for the first time, a complete portrait of George H. W. Bush emerges. Doro reveals her father as a young man courting his future wife, Barbara, and how the death of their first daughter brought them closer. Doro tells how they raised five children through much of her father's long and storied career in public service, and offers details about this tenures as head of the Republication National Committee during Watergate, ambassador to the U.N., America's liaison to China, and vice president for eight years under Ronald Reagan." "Doro also provides an insider's look at how the 41st president dealt with crises and challenges, all while keeping his humor and personality intact, and how he still does so while aiding victims of the 2004 tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. She shows how he felt when two of his sons entered politics - and when his eldest made it to the top - and sheds new light on his friendship with former rival Bill Clinton."--BOOK JACKET.
My Father, My President: A Personal Account of the Life of George H. W. Bush
by Doro Bush KochWhen George H. W. Bush asked Doro to write this memoir, she contacted hundreds of his friends and associates; conducted scores of interviews with dignitaries including Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, and General Colin Powell; tapped the memories of family members, including her mother, her four brothers, and of course, her father himself; and collected information from the former president's never-before-released files. "Now for the first time, a complete portrait of George H. W. Bush emerges. Doro reveals her father as a young man courting his future wife, Barbara, and how the death of their first daughter brought them closer. Doro tells how they raised five children through much of her father's long and storied career in public service, and offers details about this tenures as head of the Republication National Committee during Watergate, ambassador to the U.N., America's liaison to China, and vice president for eight years under Ronald Reagan." "Doro also provides an insider's look at how the 41st president dealt with crises and challenges, all while keeping his humor and personality intact, and how he still does so while aiding victims of the 2004 tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. She shows how he felt when two of his sons entered politics - and when his eldest made it to the top - and sheds new light on his friendship with former rival Bill Clinton."--BOOK JACKET.
My Father, the Captain
by Jean-Michel Cousteau Daniel PaisnerSuch a gift he has given to me! Such an inheritance! . . . I notice an unusual opening in the kelp. All around there is this dense and marvelous kelp forest, which appears to collect around a silky, sandy bottom. The way it appears before me, at just that moment, is almost otherworldly. The sun's rays are shining brightly through the kelp, lighting up this little, inexplicable patch of sand-like a spotlight on an empty stage. All around me there are tiny garibaldi, brightly colored damselfish native to the area. In normal light, they're a fantastic, shimmering orange, but here, in this bright sunlight, they are like festive candles, a string of party decorations announcing some underwater fiesta.
My Father, the Pornographer
by Chris OffuttAfter inheriting 400 novels of pornography written by his father in the 1970s and '80s, critically acclaimed author Chris Offutt sets out to make sense of a complicated father-son relationship in this carefully observed, beautifully written memoir."Chris Offutt owns one of the finest, surest prose styles around, ready and able to convey the hardest truth without flinching. Now Offutt enters the darkest and most mysterious of places--the cave of a monstrous enigma named Andrew J. Offutt--armed with nothing but his own restless curiosity. Spoiler alert: He makes it out alive, walking into the daylight to bring us a deeper, funnier, more tender and more heartbroken truth--and his masterpiece." --Michael Chabon When Andrew Offutt died, his son, Chris, inherited a desk, a rifle, and eighteen hundred pounds of pornographic fiction. Andrew had been considered the "king of twentieth-century smut," with a writing career that began as a strategy to pay for his son's orthodontic needs and soon took on a life of its own, peaking during the 1970s when the commercial popularity of the erotic novel reached its height. With his dutiful wife serving as typist, Andrew wrote from their home in the Kentucky hills, locked away in an office no one dared intrude upon. In this fashion he wrote more than four hundred novels, including pirate porn, ghost porn, zombie porn, and secret agent porn. The more he wrote, the more intense his ambition became and the more difficult it was for his children to be part of his world. Over the long summer of 2013, Chris returned to his hometown to help his widowed mother move out of his childhood home. As he began to examine his father's manuscripts and memorabilia, journals, and letters, he realized he finally had an opportunity to gain insight into the difficult, mercurial, sometimes cruel man he'd loved and feared in equal measure. Only in his father's absence could he truly make sense of the man and his legacy. In My Father, the Pornographer, Offutt takes us on the journey with him, reading his father's prodigious literary output as both a critic and as a son seeking answers. This is a book about the life of a working writer who supports his family solely by the output of his typewriter; it's about the awful psychic burdens one generation unthinkingly passes along to the next; and it's about growing up in the Appalachian hills with a pack of fearless boys riding bicycles through the woods, happy and free.
My Father's Blood
by Amy Krout-Horn"Darkness: the place where light best reveals itself." In the potent and poignant language of fine literature, this stunningly honest autobiographical novel grants candid views of chronic illness, blindness, and Native American racial identity, against the backdrop of a world often determined to demean, degrade, and disenfranchise. Though Amy Krout-Horn's inheritance brings illness, it also brings strong medicine, medicine remembered on a cellular level, derived from the profound wisdom of her Lakota ancestors. But can the ancient council fire's "spark" that ignited within a young girl's heart continue to guide the woman, even as the monster drags her into the "darkest darkness"? Like the reverberations of a native drum, Amy Krout-Horn's visceral voice resounds, imparting the message that, sometimes, our bloodlines become our lifelines.