REUNION, OR THE HOLE IN TIME
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Reunion–a mother and child reunite
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Category Archives: birth mother
Finding oneself in the late-1960s antiwar movement
With the Occupies and the growing third-party movements as elections near, this year, we are reminded of the days of hope, the time we call “the Sixties.” For many of us, this time was primarily, or crescendoed in, 1965 to 1969 or so. My essay “God’s Eyes,” originally published in 1994 in Viet Nam Generation under the title “You asked ‘What was happening then?'” received a Pushcart Prize nomination and, in 1996, honorable mention for the first New Millenium Writings nonfiction award. “God’s Eyes” is written as if speaking to my first child, given up for adoption and who had, as an adult in the early 1990s found me. “God’s Eyes” tells of discovering, through love, pregnancy, and a nonviolent demonstration in the antiwar movement, my self–my depths, and that I loved, and that we can each love and struggle for a more loving society.
“God’sEyes” tells us that we found, in those days of hope, ways to recognize the love in everyone, in self and others, and to reach through to this love to create a better society. We still can, really.
Find it here– http://www.highlightscommunications.com/gods_eyes_sample.htm
In recent novel, young antiwar lovers flee police to wilderness
The recent page-turning novel The Rescuer’s Path recounts a tale of lovers struggling against an unjust, war-making society.
The Rescuer’s Path is the tale of a Holocaust survivor’s young daughter who, in Nixon-era Washington DC, discovers and aids a wounded fugitive, a half-Arab antiwar activist suspected of the lethal bombing of a US Army truck. Overcoming their fear and distrust, the two young people become friends and flee cross-country, pursued by an implacable FBI. In the Rocky Mountain wilderness, they learn each other’s depths of love and courage. But their pursuers close in, in tragic confrontation.
Three decades later, in the shades of 9/11, the young couple’s daughter, raised adopted, seeks out the truth of her origins.
Ursula K. Le Guin calls The Rescuer’s Path “Exciting, physically vivid, and romantic.” Small Press Review terms this novel “Lyrically written, the characters vividly drawn, the story captivating.” Flannery O’Connor Award–winning author Carole L. Glickfeld says “I could not stop reading this novel–I loved it.” Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and Torch, notes, “Vivid, humane, and wise, The Rescuer’s Path held me from its first page to its last.” “A story of what it means to do the right thing,” says novelist Heather Sharfeddin; “These characters will break your heart and put it back together again.”
The Rescuer’s Path (2012, Plain View Press, trade pb., 200pp., $15.95) is available through http://www.amazon.com, http://www.plainviewpress.net, and many online bookstores, and by order through your local bookstore (distributed by Ingram).
Contact paula@paula-friedman.com to arrange a reading and/or signing for your reading group or organization.
Single Mother, Birth Mother–Share Your Experience
I am both the reunited first mother of my older son and the former Welfare mother of my younger son. Reading recently of the hardships confronting a new single mother, I remember how hard it is, the decision we each confront to raise or yield our beloved newborns. I know how the loss of our babies to adoption tears us apart, yet how, alternatively, social oppressions may crush upon our children, to whatever extent we cannot hold oppression off, if we raise our kids alone.
Halfway through my novel The Rescuer’s Path, a middle-aged woman who had relinquished her baby to adoption long before, and the twenty-something woman who’d been that baby, struggle through hope and loss toward reunion. Their thoughts and fear, hope and joy reflect the hole in time, the sense of not-there–of a would-have-been world–that pervades adoption. I’ve written about this before–in the online collection Poems of Adoption, in my “Reunion” essay in the anthology Touched by Adoption (2000, Green River), and elsewhere.
But only twice did my poetry or prose evoke what it is to raise a child alone, on Welfare, with no social supports. First, in “You!”–a brutally honest poem, winner of a 2005 Oregon State Poetry Association Award; second, in a nearly published memoir, The Baby Book.
If you have lived the experience, you know. Even to glance into blogs, fb sites, listserves, or printed books that deal with mothers trying to raise whole a newborn alone, or to let go a beautiful new child into another family’s world–reopens this never-healed wound. You will remember, you will recall. You will recall the love, the fear for this miracle child, the vulnerability.
If you have been/are such a mother, please post (up to 100 words). We all need to hear these accounts, to share what we have felt and learned.
Deering the Unknown, Blogging the Books
After reading at the warm and wondrous Wy’East Book Shoppe in Welches (Oregon) on Mount Hood last weekend, I started driving home in the dusk and hit a deer. I am fine, the car will be fine, and the deer–? Dunno; it’s mountain lion territory there. Meanwhile, today the elegant Indies Unlimited brought out its sneak peek of The Rescuer’s Path, my recent novel that recounts both the 1971 love affair between a Holocaust survivor’s daughter and a fugitive Arab-American antiwar activist suspected of the bombing of an army truck, and the 2001 search of their birth daughter for the truth of her origins– http://wp.me/p1WnN1-4Yc
Reading and Booksigning in Welches, on Mount Hood, June 15
Come join us for my reading from The Rescuer’s Path in Welches, OR, June 15, 2012, 7:30 pm, Wy’East Book Shoppe and Art Gallery, in the woodsy mall at Highway 26 one block west of the Welches traffic light.
This is a wonderful, friendly, welcoming, and well-stocked bookstore that also often features superb pieces by local arts and crafts persons.
The Rescuer’s Path is the tale of a Holocaust survivor’s daughter who, in Nixon-era Washington DC, finds, aids, and comes to love a half-Arab antiwar leader suspected by the FBI in a lethal truck-bombing. It is the story of their tragic love and of the search by their birth daughter, amid the shadows of 9/11, for the truth of her origins.
Ursula K. Le Guin calls this novel “exciting, physically vivid, and romantic.” Acclaimed novelist Cheryl Strayed says “The Rescuer’s Path held me from the first page to the last.” Flannery O’Connor Award–winner Carole L. Glickfeld says “I could not stop reading this novel–I love it.” Small Press Review says “The writing is lyrical and poetic, the characters vivid, and the story captivating.” FirstMotherForum calls The Rescuer’s Path “a compelling story with universal themes of love and loss, separation and reconciliation.”
“These characters will break your heart and put it back together again,” notes Portland author Heather Sharfeddin. Berkeley activist/songwriter Carol Denney says “This is the book you can’t put down, the people you will remember, the vibrant story we all share.” This novel demands we ask, notes the Jewish Transcript (JT) News, “How do we make peace, in ourselves and in the world?”
Come hear the reading, ask questions of the author, and perhaps purchase a signed copy of The Rescuer’s Path (2012, Plain View, $15.95).
Questions about this event? For more information: http://www.wyeastonline.com/event/meet-author-book-signing-paula-freidman-author-rescuers-path
‘unwed mothers’ and other outlaws: April 28 reading/discussion at Portland’s In Other Words feminist community center
I’m excited to be reading from my novel The Rescuer’s Path and leading a very related discussion, “‘Unwed mothers’ and other outlaws: Nonconforming mothers, single pregnancy, social activism–then and now,” at the newly revamped In Other Words Feminist Community Center, 14 NE Killingsworth, Portland, Oregon, on April 28, 5 to 6:30 p.m.
Never solely a bookstore, and now more than ever a center for community activities, In Other Words is a most inviting place for this reading and discussion of issues ranging from the social pressures on “unwed mothers” pre-Roe to the hardships confronted by impoverished single-parent families today, from the risks confronting antiwar and civil rights activists of “the Sixties” to the dangers, present and to come, for Occupiers and others who confront today’s militarized police, privatized prisons, and dismantling of basic Constitutional protections.
Ursula Le Guin calls The Rescuer’s Path “exciting, physically vivid, and romantic,” and Small Press Review says “the writing is lyrical and poetic, the characters vividly drawn, and the story captivating.” “I could not top reading this novel,” notes Flannery O’Connor Award winner Carole Glickfeld, and acclaimed Portland author Cheryl Strayed says The Rescuer’s Path “held me from the first page to the last.”
In The Rescuer’s Path, a Holocaust survivor’s young daughter finds and aids a wounded fugitive, the half-Arab antiwar leader suspected of a lethal truck bombing. The two become friends, then lovers, and eventually flee the FBI to seeming refuge in the Colorado Rockies. But, after a brief idyll, pursuit closes in and leads to tragedy. In the aftermath, the couple’s baby daughter is yielded at birth for adoption; thirty years later, in the shadows of 9/11, this grown daughter seeks the truth about her heritage.
With flashbacks to Holocaust rescue, scenes from a 1980s-1990s Berkeley marriage, refugee family tales, and basic issues of mortality and of righteous living, The Rescuer’s Path provides lively meat for reading and discussion.
Spring Oregon Readings–The Rescuer’s Path
You are invited!
Three Oregon readings now scheduled for The Rescuer’s Path, my new novel of the antiwar movement, the struggle for justice, an adoption reunion, and the love between a Holocaust survivor’s sheltered daughter and an anguished half-Arab peace activist suspected by the FBI of a lethal truck bombing:
The Rescuer’s Path: photo of cover
Hood River Library, Hood River, Oregon, April 1, 2012, 2 p.m. Cosponsored by the library and Waucoma Books, Hood River, Oregon.
In Other Words–Women’s Bookstore and Community Center, Portland, Oregon, April 28, 2012, 5-6:30 p.m. Reading, with discussion “Unwed Mothers and Other Outlaws–1960s and the Present Day”
White Salmon Valley Library, White Salmon, Washington, May 12, 2-4 p.m. Three Regional Authors Read.
In the New World–The Rescuer’s Path is now available
The day of debut, January 1, 2012. The day of true debut, January 9, 2012–The Rescuer’s Path is now published (Plain View Press, $15.95). The Rescuer’s Path is available for online purchase through Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, etc., and listed on LibraryThing, already reviewed on MainstreamFiction and various other blogs, soon to be in several print publications.
“Exciting, physically vivid, and romantic”–Ursula K. Le Guin. “I couldn’t stop reading this novel”–Carole L. Glickfeld. “Vivid, humane, and wise”–Cheryl Strayed. Many other strong, positive blurbs by admired women authors.
“A wonderful family epic”–Harriet Klausner, MainstreamFiction. Other strong, positive reviews by other bloggers. . . .
Is this what I had always in mind? Imagining The New World of Being an Author (with a published novel), is this what I expected? Life going along afterward just as before? Some congratulations, much enthusiasm from friends and acquaintances, mixed bookstore reactions, mixed reviewer reactions (from promised reviews to brushoffs), constant work-beyond-work twelve hours a day on p.r.–this is the great golden ring, the nirvana-in-the-real-world, (etc. etc.), I had in mind?
Well, not exactly, no. Imagine all the circus days of childhood, all the glory days of hope, the “State Fair” (40s movie) happy-happy here-together, over the top, unending joy of blossom springtime, weddingcake festivities of . . . oh you know, you get it, you imagine, you can image, cue the rising theme, the music, soundtrack of the glorious, the successful, the most-fully-reached, a-c-h-i-e-v-e-d in glory, whatnot and all that, forever life.
Oh yes. Well it’s a book–a good book. About a Holocaust survivor’s daughter who, in 1971 Washington DC, rides in a park and finds and helps a wounded man, a fugitive, a Syrian refugee’s son, who is the antiwar leader hunted for the lethal bombing of a US Army truck. They turn distrust to trust, to friendship, to love, but police pursue . . . You get it, right? But not yet–years go by, their child is given up, grows up, seeks for her origins, the days of 9/11 loom . . .
If you like it, say so on the Amazon, LibraryThing, Goodreads, etc. ratings/rankings/reader-reviewing sites. I’d love people to know of this good book, to read it. We live in this world, we writers and readers, ours to know is real.
In new antiwar novel, Jewish-Arab couple flee implacable police
New, progressive, and a page-turner, The Rescuer’s Path recounts a tale of inter-ethnic love and the struggle for justice. The Rescuer’s Path is forthcoming January 1, 2012, from Plain View Press and available through amazon.com, barnes&noble.com, plainviewpress.net, etc., and by bookstore order, beginning in mid-January. Retail price is $15.95
I’ll be reading from The Rescuer’s Path at the Ballard Library in Seattle on Feb. 9, with readings and booksignings planned for early spring in the Columbia River Gorge area and elsewhere. Contact paula@paula-friedman.com if you’d like to arrange a reading and/or signing for your reading group or organization.
The Rescuer’s Path tells what happens, in Nixon-era Washington DC, when a Holocaust survivor’s young daughter discovers and aids a wounded fugitive, the half-Arab antiwar activist who is the prime suspect in the lethal bombing of a US Army truck. Overcoming hesitancies and distrust, the two young people become friends, fall in love, and flee cross-country, pursued by an implacable FBI. High in the Rockies, they discover each other’s depths of love and their own real courage, but the pursuit soon closes in.
Three decades later, in the shadow of 9/11, the young couple’s birth daughter, raised by adoptive parents, searches for the truth about her origins.
Ursula K. Le Guin calls The Rescuer’s Path “Exciting, physically vivid, and romantic.” Flannery O’Connor Award–winning author Carole L. Glickfeld says “I could not stop reading this novel–I loved it.” Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and Torch, notes, “Vivid, humane, and wise, The Rescuer’s Path held me from its first page to its last.” “A story of what it means to do the right thing,” says Heather Sharfeddin, author of novels of today’s rural west; “These characters will break your heart and put it back together again.”
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