 |
This passionate, heartfelt memoir is a tribute to the love shared by mother and daughter amidst the insular beauty of Whidbey Island. Ronhaar writes of receiving a level of unconditional love that many readers will envy: “I honestly do not ever recall a time where Mom wasn’t anything but understanding, delightful, encouraging, attentive, overjoyed, or genuinely proud of me.” Despite receiving unconditional love, Ronhaar was no angel, and she balances her glowing narrative with explorations of her childish faults and incidents that foreshadowed her more serious negative behavior after the sudden loss of her mother.
Ronhaar’s divorced mother tragically passed away when her youngest daughter was only ten, following too soon the deaths of her maternal great-grandmother and her grandmother, leaving the girl emotionally and physically stranded for over a decade. Before the deaths occurred, her mom was forced to leave Ronhaar’s childhood home, a grievous loss that rocked her mother’s ability to cope. The child was not allowed to attend her mother’s funeral but instead was torn away from Washington’s Puget Sound to live in the unfamiliar California Central Valley with a well-meaning but abusive family friend. Young Ronhaar—Amy—soon descended into a self-loathing cesspool of fear, despair, and emotional incoherence.
Ronhaar’s talents as a creative writer are immediately apparent on the first page of this long-form essay. Her lyrical, poetically wrought prose is deeply descriptive, painting vivid literary pictures of the settings, people, and events of her childhood and coming of age. Alternately uplifting and emotionally searing, Ronhaar’s relentless self-examination and her responses and recovery from her painful losses are extraordinarily evocative. The author’s honesty and insightfulness shine through in this poignant work.