Ouija Boards, Erasure, and Speculation: Experimentation in Memoir

By Marty Ross-Dolen

In December 1960, when my mother was fourteen years old, her parents were killed in an airline disaster involving the collision of two commercial jets in the blustering skies over New York City. My grandparents were traveling from Columbus, Ohio, to seek placement for their family’s iconic magazine, Highlights for Children, on the newsstands. I was born six years later to my nineteen-year-old mother, two weeks shy of her twentieth birthday. My parents named me for my mo...