Muse-Blog
No Father Can Save Her, Plain View Press
Some background:
My book is biographical and, as with any biographical book, there are touches of fiction blended in. I was born upstate New York in a small town in the Catskill Mountains, low riding mountains about three hours north of New York City.
My mother’s family lived in the city, Brooklyn to Queens, they survived the depression. We had roots upstate. My great grandmother lived in a farmhouse. She died at age 98. As a young woman after her husband died she rented out rooms to tourists from the city during the summers, it was how my grandmother met my grandfather.
My father’s family lived in the country. They were immigrant dairy farmers from Switzerland. They lived on a hill nicknamed Swiss Hill.
My father died in 1964, wounding my heart. The opening poem is from the last time I saw him, when I realized he was dying and would never come home.
Much of my writing has stemmed from grief.
Inside the front cover is a photograph of me and my dad on one of our vacations, taken in 1961 or 1962, before Hodgkin’s lymphoma overtook him. Back then there was no cure.
Left with my mother my world flipped upside down. She was mentally ill. We never did get along. I ran away from her as a child. She moved me to the city where I had to readjust. I was being raised by her brother. Life was chaos.
As a teenager, sex became a way to feel alive. Seeking love through sex was a solution to loss. And it was the 60s and 70s during the sexual revolution.
This book was not an easy book to find a publisher for. Then last December the editor who chose my book died. The press pulled together, and the books in process were published. Slightly late, but published.
Death has touched my life in so many ways that I was not surprised Susan Bright died. I am honored, and grateful she took the risk to publish my book.
The final section of the book holds poems of redemption, the main character in the book, myself, found the love of her life.
The book came out in April. It is available on Amazon, or I can sell it directly and send a signed copy.
See the two interviews on the No Father Can Save Her page and a sample poem.