Extract - Tilting, A Memoir by Nicole Harkin
I am so excited to offer an extract from Tilting a Memoir on Six Tinder Weeks..... What do you think when you read it?
Is he or isn't he having an affair? This book looks lovely and emotional. I passed on reviewing it this time but the next novel set in Berlin, I really look forward to reading.
Tilting, A Memoir
We only learned about our father's girlfriend after he became deathly ill and lay in a coma 120 miles from our home.
Overhearing the nurse tell Linda--since I was nine I had called my mom by her first name--about the girlfriend who came in almost every day to visit him when we weren't there confirmed that the last moment of normal had passed us by without our realizing it. Up to then our family had unhappily coexisted with Dad flying jumbo jets to Asia while we lived in Montana. We finally came together to see Dad through his illness, but he was once again absent from a major family event--unable to join us from his comatose state. This is the moment when our normal existence tilted.
Dad recovered, but the marriage ailed, as did Linda, with cancer. Our family began to move down an entirely different path with silver linings we wouldn't see for many years.
In this candid and compassionate memoir which recently won a Gold Award in The Wishing Shelf Book Award, Nicole Harkin describes with an Impressionist's fine eye the evolution of a family that is quirky, independent, uniquely supportive, peculiarly loving and, most of all, marvelously human.
Purchase Links
https://www.amazon.com/Tilting-Memoir-Nicole-Harkin/dp/1612968929/
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/tilting-nicole-harkin/1126555336?ean=9781612968926
Book Trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO1niSUWsuA
Author Bio ���
Nicole Harkin currently resides in Washington, DC with her husband and two small children. She works as a writer and family photographer. As a Fulbright Scholar during law school, Nicole lived in Berlin, Germany where she studied German environmentalism. Her work can be found in Thought Collection and you are here: The Journal of Creative Geography. She is currently working on mystery set in Berlin. Her photography can be seen at www.nicoleharkin.com.
Social Media Links ���
https://www.facebook.com/tiltingamemoir/
https://www.instagram.com/tiltingamemoir/
https://twitter.com/harkinna?lang=en
EXTRACT for Six Tinder Weeks
1988, Montana
���MOTHER, I found a piece of black hair in Jack���s luggage,��� Linda said to Gram. They were talking in the laundry room, around the corner from the hallway to our bedrooms. I stopped in my tracks and sat down on the steps knowing through some sense of Linda���s tone that this was a conversation that would stop if either knew I was eavesdropping.
���Maybe it���s from the dry cleaners,��� Gram replied.
���I don���t think so,��� said Linda.
���What are you going to do about it?��� asked Gram.
���I don���t know.���
The subject was changed, but I understood what the hair implied. I just had no idea how to process this information.
���Well, what do you think?��� asked my new friend Jenny.
Since we had moved to Montana, Jenny and I had quickly become inseparable.
���Does that mean they���ll get divorced? Why would Dad do this?��� I asked.
���What are you going to do?��� she asked.
���I guess I could ask him,��� I said.
When Linda and Dad were first married Dad had made some off-hand criticism about the way in which Linda did the laundry and she never did his laundry again. Linda could be that consequential.
After that Dad took his clothes to the dry cleaner so his pants always had a lightly starched crease in them. Like the pillows running down the middle of their bed, this arrangement never struck me as odd.
Why had Linda even been looking in his bags, then? Had she felt generous and was for once cleaning his laundry for him? Or, was she suspicious and looking for proof of her suspicions?
I went downstairs full of bravado. He sat at his credenza reading his mail. The windowless office was in the back basement of the house. The room, rectangular in shape, had large built-in cabinets made out of blond wood at both ends of the room.
���Dad, are you having an affair?���
���Now, Nicole, why would you ask me that?��� His voice had a touch of laughter, almost conspiratorial in nature.
���Mom found a black hair in your luggage.��� He looked up at me. ���Are you?��� I asked.
���No.���
���You���re lying.���
Dad���s face turned red and he jumped up.
���I am not a liar. I have never lied to you. Don���t ever call me a liar again if you want to keep living in my house,��� he yelled.
Yelling was generally Linda���s purview. I backed out of the room, but he followed me as I walked away. He had never said anything like this to me before. I ran upstairs crying but I was somehow relieved. He wasn���t having an affair. I believed him because of the fervor he had shown
