Author : Ellen Heenan Reddy
Publisher : FriesenPress
ISBN 13 : 1525528963
Total Pages : 292 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (255 download)
Book Synopsis My Darling Patty by : Ellen Heenan Reddy
Download or read book My Darling Patty written by Ellen Heenan Reddy and published by FriesenPress. This book was released on 2019-03-02 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After her mother suffered a stroke, Ellen Heenan Reddy hastily packed her mother’s belongings and moved her from Michigan into Ellen’s Wisconsin home. Among those rapidly gathered items was a simple bag from Target found at the back of an over-stuffed closet. Years later, long after her mother’s Alzheimer’s had progressed to the point where she required professional care, Ellen opened the bag and discovered hundreds of letters from her father to her mother. The letters tell the story of her parents as they met, courted, and survived the years of sacrifice and anguish that the country endured during World War II. Within these letters, the author learned stories of her parents she had never fully known and discovered inroads to understanding her mother, a woman she had largely seen as a mother in nomenclature only. Her mother had been the sort of woman who played the role once a year for the holidays and was otherwise absent—absorbed in her beach time, wine, travel, and living the life of a gadabout. My Darling Patty is a fascinating hybrid text that shares the unedited, discovered letters of her father alongside Ellen’s imagined responses from her mother. What emerges from this intriguing mix of documents and imagined extensions is a fascinating family portrait spanning three generations during some of America’s most defining history. The text that emerges also offers a mechanism for healing relationships long misunderstood.
