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What Happened to My Mother: A true story of family, war and reconciliation

What Happened to My Mother: A true story of family, war and reconciliation

Julie Weinstein
4.3/5 ( ratings)
Read Download
At age six, I was living with my mother just outside Birmingham, England. The world was at war. I was surrounded by men and women in uniform, anti-aircraft guns poking up through trees, air raid sirens going off day and night, skies filled with planes hurtling bombs at us, and never enough to eat. My father wasn’t there to protect my mother and me. He was in France with the rest of the British Army trying to repel the German advance. The one thing that made living in the midst of all the chaos and destruction bearable was the watchful, loving presence of my mother. So long as she was there, I knew I would be all right. Yet, a year later, to my shock and bewilderment, she took me over to Ireland where my grandparents lived and left me, without explanation, not with them but at a boarding school filled with strangers. I never saw her again. When I asked my family why she didn’t come for me, all they would say was that she was dead and I was to stop asking about her. I’d attended no funeral, seen no grave, so I didn’t believe them. No one in the family would speak about her. I was left to flounder alone with my unresolved rage and grief over my beloved mother’s seeming abandonment of me until a personal crisis compelled me to confront my family’s silence about her and force them to tell me what happened to my mother.

Comments:
Part psychological thriller, part wartime flashback, "What Happened to My Mother" maneuvers its way with panache through the aftermath of the tragic death of a mother in England in WWII. With every turn in this spellbinding memoir, Pamela Moriarty's deft storytelling induces suspense, anger, hope, and finally, deep satisfaction. Employing a wry and quiet aplomb, the author narrates how, as a young girl, she overcame neglect and worse by her caretakers in the wake of her mother's death. Moriarty manages to carefully and skillfully probe the denial that lasted long into adulthood and to chronicle her final coming to terms with the shocking reality of how her mother died.
Tom Daley, author of "House You Cannot Reach: Poems in the Voice of My Mother and Other Poems"

This powerfully evocative memoir traces the story of a child's experience of the ravages of World War II. It is a story of abandonment and 'hot scalding grief' but also of the resilience and hope that make acceptance and conciliation possible. Told vividly and with profound empathy and wisdom, its masterful narration reaches for forgiveness and redemptive love.
Linda Dittmar, Professor Emerita, taught literature and film studies at the University of Massachusetts for forty years. Author of two books and many articles, she is currently completing a memoir about Israel's war of 1948.

This beautifully crafted memoir explores the parameters of love and despair. Its affecting story of a young girl's inexplicable loss of her mother in war-torn Britain and her decades-later discovery of her mother's fate as well as the years between will linger in your memory long after you have closed the book.
Marion Kilson's most recent book is "Kings, Priests, and Kinsmen" . She is also the author of "Dancing With the Gods: Essays in Ga Ritual"
Language
English
Pages
480
Format
Kindle Edition
Publisher
Pamela Moriarty
Release
July 12, 2016

What Happened to My Mother: A true story of family, war and reconciliation

Julie Weinstein
4.3/5 ( ratings)
Read Download
At age six, I was living with my mother just outside Birmingham, England. The world was at war. I was surrounded by men and women in uniform, anti-aircraft guns poking up through trees, air raid sirens going off day and night, skies filled with planes hurtling bombs at us, and never enough to eat. My father wasn’t there to protect my mother and me. He was in France with the rest of the British Army trying to repel the German advance. The one thing that made living in the midst of all the chaos and destruction bearable was the watchful, loving presence of my mother. So long as she was there, I knew I would be all right. Yet, a year later, to my shock and bewilderment, she took me over to Ireland where my grandparents lived and left me, without explanation, not with them but at a boarding school filled with strangers. I never saw her again. When I asked my family why she didn’t come for me, all they would say was that she was dead and I was to stop asking about her. I’d attended no funeral, seen no grave, so I didn’t believe them. No one in the family would speak about her. I was left to flounder alone with my unresolved rage and grief over my beloved mother’s seeming abandonment of me until a personal crisis compelled me to confront my family’s silence about her and force them to tell me what happened to my mother.

Comments:
Part psychological thriller, part wartime flashback, "What Happened to My Mother" maneuvers its way with panache through the aftermath of the tragic death of a mother in England in WWII. With every turn in this spellbinding memoir, Pamela Moriarty's deft storytelling induces suspense, anger, hope, and finally, deep satisfaction. Employing a wry and quiet aplomb, the author narrates how, as a young girl, she overcame neglect and worse by her caretakers in the wake of her mother's death. Moriarty manages to carefully and skillfully probe the denial that lasted long into adulthood and to chronicle her final coming to terms with the shocking reality of how her mother died.
Tom Daley, author of "House You Cannot Reach: Poems in the Voice of My Mother and Other Poems"

This powerfully evocative memoir traces the story of a child's experience of the ravages of World War II. It is a story of abandonment and 'hot scalding grief' but also of the resilience and hope that make acceptance and conciliation possible. Told vividly and with profound empathy and wisdom, its masterful narration reaches for forgiveness and redemptive love.
Linda Dittmar, Professor Emerita, taught literature and film studies at the University of Massachusetts for forty years. Author of two books and many articles, she is currently completing a memoir about Israel's war of 1948.

This beautifully crafted memoir explores the parameters of love and despair. Its affecting story of a young girl's inexplicable loss of her mother in war-torn Britain and her decades-later discovery of her mother's fate as well as the years between will linger in your memory long after you have closed the book.
Marion Kilson's most recent book is "Kings, Priests, and Kinsmen" . She is also the author of "Dancing With the Gods: Essays in Ga Ritual"
Language
English
Pages
480
Format
Kindle Edition
Publisher
Pamela Moriarty
Release
July 12, 2016

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