Category: Memoir Publisher: Beckham Publications Group
ISBN-10: 093176128X
Type: Non-Fiction
Pages: 300
Copyright: May 1, 2007
ISBN-13: 9780931761287
Shadows in My House of Sunshine has received much acclaim from media and the public. Emilie Betts' memoir spans her 85 years of rich experiences and her personal passage of adventures, challenges, joys and sorrows.
Dating from the Pre-Depression years straight through September 11th, Shadows In My House of Sunshine links the author's experiences to this rich, diverse era. Living in twenty-nine different homes over the course of her life, the author relates her experiences with candor and openness. Each turn of the page reveals the true spirit and bravery of Ms. Betts' triumphs and troubles.
Excerpt
The once star-studded Orpheum Theater in Easton, Pennsylvania was now boarded up, collecting leaves and trash in the front entrance, a sad testimony to the heyday of the Roaring Twenties.
This was my father's theater-where stars of the New York stage and opera such as the Gish sisters, Madame Schumann-Heink, Fritz Kreisler and Amelita Galli-Curci were featured. In those days my parents were riding the crest of their glittering musical world. But the stock market crash of 1929 and the resulting Great Depression swept it all away and we were left penniless and homeless.
So began our nomadic journey. We sought shelter in rented houses, rented rooms, and boarding houses - even tents. We found food baskets left on our back porch. We dodged bill collectors. We were on the move constantly, but as my mother struggled to maintain the family's dignity, my father buried his despair in alcohol.
After WWII, I married Bob, my much decorated fiance. I now had a permanent address and the security of a classic Father Knows Best marriage. It was a challenge keeping my life together while mothering our three children, running a successful fabric shop in the heart of sophisticated Westchester County, New York, partying every weekend until the wee hours, and somehow managing to take my place in the choir loft of the Presbyterian Church on Sunday mornings.
When our children were teenagers and I was middle-aged, five orphaned nephews and nieces came to live with us. After many years I was back to car-pooling, bus stop duties, and the PTA, plus trying to blend these traumatized little people into our family. And fulfilling the social obligations of a successful advertising executive's wife.
Retirement gave us ten happy years. And then my life fell apart. Bob died, and my middle child Anne died a year later. This time when the moving van came, I went into the cold storage of depression. Months later I heard an organ grinder in Central Park playing a tune that was on a music box Bob had given me. The hounds of depression began to slink away as I remembered the music box and the tiny figures of a man and his lady twirling round and round. It gave me a purpose.
I went west and started buying and renovating houses in Wyoming and Arizona. After a time all this lost its luster and I realized I was homesick for New York. I found a sky-high apartment overlooking Central Park. For five years I enjoyed what that great city had to offer- until September 11, 2001 knocked everyone's life askew. From deep inside I heard my father's gentle voice telling me I needed trees and plants and water to soothe my spirit. Along the waters of Long Island Sound, I found an enchanted cottage so like the place where I was born. It had taken me 8o years and 29 houses to find it. I stepped inside the front door and knew I had finally come home.
"I have just read your book again, and it was even better the second time around. The first time I couldn't wait to turn each page; this time I savored each page at length and truly enjoyed your beautiful writing and getting to know Emmie, I now realize I didn't know you well enough."
"I just finished your book late last night. So much of it I could relate to. I was 10 years old when WWII broke out. Your beginnings and culture were very different from mine, So it was intriguing to compare our travels through historical events. Having older siblings helped me to know how the grownups felt. My brother mercifully came home to us safe and sound. You have a story of extraordinary responsibility that was presented to you and the houses in your story were, for me, the main character. They tied the whole thing together, You know... the thread running through."
Inside the Methadone Clinic. Addiction to heroin, methadone, and other opiates. Destruction. The primal addiction" of the child, power and control over your own life, the institutions and the characters, the love between a mother and son. This book i
