Description
Publishers Weekly: Berkheimer candidly brings her personality to the page on this fantastic journey from naivete to wide-eyed maturity. (April 2016)
Library Journal: Berkheimer’s homespun memoir provides a wistful look back at a simpler time. An appealing counterbalance to more dreary war-era accounts. (Might 2016)
“Mining companies piled trash coal in a slag heap and set it ablaze. The coal burned up, however the slate did not. The heat turned it rose and orange and lavender. The dirt road I lived on was once paved with that sharp-edged rock. We referred to as it red dog. Grandma said, Do not you go running on that red dog road. But I do.”
Gypsies, faith-healers, moonshiners, and snake handlers cavort through Drema’s childhood in 1940s Appalachia after her father is killed within the coal mines, her mother goes off to work as a Rosie the Riveter, and she is left within the care of devout Pentecostal grandparents. What follows is a spitfire of a memoir that reads like a novel, with intrigue, sweeping emotion, and indisputable charm. Drema’s coming of age is colored by tent revivals with Grandpa, poetry-writing hobos, and exotic carnivals, and through it all, she serves witness to a multi-generational circle of relatives of saints and sinners whose lives defy the stereotypes. Just as she defies her own.