This Life and the Fireworks

The author calls the 52 vignettes “cupcakes” and invites the reader to travel along vicariously with her as she recounts incidents beginning with her childhood and going into adulthood. No fiction needed here, for her life does fill the description her mother coined ” this life and the fireworks.” She was born in Pomeroy, Ohio, a river town with mythical energy fed by the author’s extraordinary ancestors. Descriptions of her saintly Grandmother’s rise above tragedy to hold her family together and rich descriptions of her aunts and uncles encompass the charm and drama of life in the German speaking neighborhood, Monkey Run. Her father, “Poppa Moose,” takes a position with the Dupont factory in Belle, West Virginia. There as a baby she and her mother Edith Mae and four years later her brother Scotty adjust to living cheek to cheek with a fiery chemical factory on the Kanawha River. Later her mother is diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, changing this writer’s life dramatically that leads to her being unofficially adopted by sophiscated neighbors across the street. The culture of individualism by her godparents makes this writer comfortable as a non-conformist. The role reversal of being mother to her mother, divorcee, birth, death, disappointment and adventures are all handled with the author’s invincible spirit that continues to transform her daily life.