Linda Joy Myers Don't Call Me Mother

Annotation

"I wanted to tell the secret stories that my great-grandmother Blanche whispered to me on summer nights in a featherbed in Iowa. I was eight and she was eighty . . ."At the age of four, a little girl stands on a cold, windy railroad platform in Wichita, Kansas, watching a train take her mother away. For the rest of her life, her mother will be an only occasional-and always troubled-visitor who denies her the love she longs for. Linda Joy Myers's compassionate, gripping, and soul-searching memoir tells the story of three generations of daughters who, though determined to be different from their absent mothers, ultimately follow in their footsteps, recreating a pattern that they yearn to break. Accompany Linda as she uncovers family secrets, seeks solace in music, and begins her healing journey-ultimately transcending the prison of her childhood and finding forgiveness for her family and herself. This edition includes a new afterword in which Myers confronts her family's legacy and comes full circle with her daughter and grandchildren, seeding a new path for them.