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Kate’s 2¢: “Ancestor trouble: a reckoning and a reconciliation” by Maud Newton
“Ancestor trouble: a reckoning and a reconciliation” by Maud Newton
Kate’s 2¢: There is a plethora of in-depth biographies of authors and reviews of their books, that state the title, author, published date, and genre; as well as, describing what the book is about, setting, and character(s), so, Kate’s 2¢ merely shares my thoughts about what I read. I’m just saying…
As you can see, by the more than a few take-aways, I was taken by this biography and the research Maud Newton did:
— The older I get, the more I search backwards.
–Her Mother was not raised religious, but when it came it was swift and feverish.
— My parents’ divorce, but their union lives on in me.
— families need not be bound by blood.
— Genealogy is often traced through DNA testing. It’s difficult to repair inter-generational trauma.
— The Indians of Wounded Knee died twice, once at the end of a gun; then by the pen (Their history is altered or altogether lost).
— To some degree, we re-enact what we experience unfolding in our childhoods. We recreate traumatic dynamics from our early lives.
— Psychological heredity may be possible through unconscious family loyalty; a kind of anniversary syndrome.
— Personality flows from heredity factors that are arranged at the time of conception.
— The Humeral System: blood is a sanguine, cheerful temperament, flam was lemmatical and steady type; yellow bile was the chloric, spontaneous, energetic; black bily was the melancholy, anxious, depressive.
— The genes we inherited from our ancestors have a lot to do with the odors our bodies give off.
— Mindful meditation can expose sudden unexpected feelings.
— To understand ourselves, we need to understand our ancestors.
— I was drawn to my ancestors in a spiritual realm.
From MaudNewton.com
Rebecca “Maud” Newton is a writer, critic, and former lawyer born in Dallas, Texas in 1971. She was raised in Miami, Florida.
Newton was born in Dallas and raised in a fundamentalist household in Miami by an evangelical mother and racist father. She attended college and law school at the University of Florida.
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
Ancestor trouble: a reckoning and a reconciliation DB108855
Newton, Maud. Reading time: 11 hours, 20 minutes.
Read by Catherine Taber.
Biography
“Maud Newton’s ancestors have vexed and fascinated her since she was a girl. Her mother’s father, who came of age in Texas during the Great Depression, was said to have married thirteen times and been shot by one of his wives. Her mother’s grandfather killed a man with a hay hook and died in an institution. Mental illness and religious fanaticism percolated through Maud’s maternal lines back to an ancestor accused of being a witch in Puritan-era Massachusetts. Maud’s father, an aerospace engineer turned lawyer, was an educated man who extolled the virtues of slavery and obsessed over the “purity” of his family bloodline, which he traced back to the Revolutionary War. He tried in vain to control Maud’s mother, a whirlwind of charisma and passion given to feverish projects: thirty rescue cats, and a church in the family’s living room where she performed exorcisms. Their divorce, when it came, was a relief. Still, the meeting of her parents’ lines in Maud inspired an anxiety that she couldn’t avoid.
Downloaded: August 15, 2022
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Kate’s 2¢: “The Old Man” by Thomas Perry
“The Old Man” by Thomas Perry
I enjoyed this book. It isn’t often that I’ll stay with a story, taking brief snack and bathroom breaks, straight through until the tale has been told. The narrative arc changes with new situations, locations, and people. You know the story won’t be done until all the false passports hve been used. The characters’ back stories are artfully woven into the narrative, so I came to care about them.
Here are a few take-outs:
— He woke up one morning and realized the conditions he’d been accustomed to seeing as permanent, had changed.
— His dogs, Dave and Carol, taught him that each day was to be greeted with joy and intense interest.
— Once the attacked started, it would be loud and fast.
— Tonight, so manyyears later, taking back the money seemed like a story someone had told him.
— The predicament he had created for himself when he was young, had made him aware that life was precious…A human being who got up under his own power, saw the sun, and had moved and had food to eat, was a very lucky animal.
— Once you run, there isn’t any possibility of not running.
— He was old like a seven-foot rattle snake was old.
— The things that didn’t seem right, often weren’t.
— Predators would appear after you’ve gotten tired of looking.
Peter Berkrot did a great job of reading this story for the NLS.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Perry was born in Tonawanda, New York, August 7, 1947. son of Richard (a teacher) and Elizabeth (a teacher)
He received a B.A. from Cornell University in 1969 and his Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of Rochester in 1974.
He has been a laborer, maintenance man, commercial fisherman, weapons mechanic, university administrator and teacher, as well as a television writer and producer (Simon & Simon, 21 Jump Street, Star Trek: The Next Generation). Through January 2020, Perry has published 27 novels. He lives in Southern California with his wife Jo (née Lee) and two children, Alix Elizabeth, Isabel Rose.[4]
From NLS/BARD/LOC:
The old man DB108946
Perry, Thomas. Reading time: 11 hours, 16 minutes.
Read by Peter Berkrot.
Suspense Fiction
Mystery and Detective Stories
“To all appearances, Dan Chase is a harmless retiree in Vermont with two big mutts and a grown daughter he keeps in touch with by phone. But most sixty-year-old widowers don’t have multiple driver’s licenses, savings stockpiled in banks across the country, and a bugout kit with two Beretta Nanos stashed in the spare bedroom closet. Most have not spent decades on the run. Thirty-five years ago, as a young hotshot in army intelligence, Chase was sent to Libya to covertly assist a rebel army. When the plan turned sour, Chase reacted according to his own ideas of right and wrong, triggering consequences he could never have anticipated. And someone still wants him dead because of them. Just as he had begun to think himself finally safe, Chase must reawaken his survival instincts to contend with the history he has spent his adult life trying to escape. Armed mercenaries, spectacularly crashed cars, a precarious love interest, and an unforgettable chase scene through the snow-this is lethal p
Downloaded: September 2, 2022
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