Friday Feature Maternal Threads Frances Susanne Brown

Thursday Threads Riding for Love by T... Tell Again Tuesday Summertime Book Gi...

Friday Feature Maternal Threads Frances Susanne Brown

Friday Feature
Shares
Maternal Threads
By
Frances Susanne Brown
Today we are hosting Frances Susanne Brown. She is sharing with us how her memoir is a romance and a mystery. So tells us Frances, how is that possible?

Thank you, C.D. Hersh, for hosting me on Friday Feature today!

I’m celebrating the recent release of my memoir, Maternal Threads, from High Hill Press. That’s right, it’s a memoir.

Not a romance, you ask? Not a mystery? Well, yes, it’s a little bit of both. But as nonfiction, it falls into the category of memoir, since the story told is essentially factual, as least as far as my memory would allow.

Mysteries are great—how could we imagine life without Stephen King, Linda Howard, or Preston and Child? We couldn’t. Everyone loves an intriguing, unanswered question, whether it’s a spine-chilling murder tale or one that takes us into another dimension, another world entirely.

But what if that mystery, that unanswered question, turns out to be a little more personal than fiction? Beyond the realm of the imaginary? Like, in your own family tree?

I reached the age of fifty-two before I realized there was something missing from my life. And trust me, I had no right to make such a claim. I’d been one of the lucky ones—blessed with good health, landing my happily-ever-after husband 30 odd years ago, raising three successful, happy children, and achieving a sort of “status” in my chosen career field of scientific research.

So, I had it all, right? What on earth could be missing?

I’d reached this, what should have been the settled stage of mid-life and realized one terrifying fact: I didn’t know who I was. I couldn’t relate to other women in any of the arenas of my life’s facets comfortably. I was still going to school—still a student!—at an age when I should have been satisfied with what I’d achieved earlier in life. Hell, I couldn’t even go shopping for a holiday party outfit without feeling as lost as a kitten behind a garbage pail. An ill-dressed one at that.

I was half a tree. Although I had a firm grasp on my heritage on my dad’s side, I had no clue about my maternal heritage. On my mother’s side, I’d had Mom and Aunt Charlotte, my mother’s “half-sister.” Charlotte was seventeen when my mother was born.

Trouble was, by the time I decided to explore my maternal side, everyone who could have answered my questions had passed. If they even would have been willing to provide answers.

And then, there was my daughter. My only daughter, who was about as different from me, and from my mother, as sugar from vinegar. Yet as she matured into an independent, difficult, free-spirited woman before my eyes, there was something disconcertingly familiar about her . . .

She reminded me an awful lot of Aunt Charlotte, who grew up embracing the cocky attitude of the flappers in 1920s New York.

Maternal Threads describes my journey through my own history in an effort to stabilize my otherwise unbalanced sense of identity. It took me back to the Flapper Era, 1920s Greenwich Village, when the Gibson girl cut her hair, bound her breasts, and shunned the until-then classic visage of femininity. It led me to the disconcerting discovery that the town where my mother was born no longer even appeared on a map.

Memoirs are not just about one person’s life. On the contrary, a memoir can unearth a plethora of commonalities we all share. Idiosyncrasies, uncertainties, and fears we all can relate to. And learn from.

Maternal Threads is a mystery, and it’s about history, but a very special kind. It’s about ancestry—a very personal and precious history that each and every one of us owns.

Book Trailer: http://bit.ly/1GfAInO

Maternal Threads-cover