Wendell Affield

Pawns: The Farm, Nebish, MN, 1950s (eBook, ePUB)

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Caught between a mentally ill mother and a stepfather with undiagnosed PTSD, Author Wendell Affield's childhood was marked by family dysfunction. In this memoir, which includes nearly 100 illustrations, he recounts growing up on an isolated farm in northern Minnesota in the 1950s.

Musty letters, documents, and sixty-year-old photo negatives conjured memories as Affield pored over them.

In a grainy negative beneath the magnifying glass, Affield saw his mother as the beautiful, mentally ill young woman transplanted in 1949 from her cosmopolitan New York roots. She stands beside the lilac that the author will land next to a few years later after jumping from a second story window to escape her fury.

Memories of a murdered puppy and his stepfather's rage rose to the surface as Affield studied a blurred image of the corncrib the dogs were tied beneath at the farm.

In another picture he discovered himself wedged between his brothers and sister in a leaky rowboat and flashed back to the summer his mother hid from her abusive husband in a cabin perched above Lake Chelan in the Cascade Mountains. Faded photos and hand-written birth dates on the backs reveal a woman who feared forgetting her children after she was committed to a mental institution, her children in foster homes.

Follow along on this journey as the author researches his own childhood and uncovers brand new details about himself and his family.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Wendell Affield
• Erscheinungstermin: 1. Februar 2020
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781945902062
• Artikelnr.: 70908501

Autorenporträt

It's one thing to write a book; it's another to live it. Wendell Affield never knew who his father was. His childhood was punctuated by a volatile mother and stepfather. At sixteen he left home, rode the rails out west, and lived in hobo camps. At seventeen he enlisted in the navy. At twenty, he was wounded in an ambush while driving a river patrol boat in Vietnam and medevac'd home. He spent thirty years working in the food industry.

Affield retired in 2001 and knew he had stories to tell. He spent several years attending Bemidji State University (BSU), learning how to tell a story. His Vietnam "memory stories" evolved into a memoir, "Muddy Jungle Rivers." The memoir has opened surprising new paths. Today he speaks to groups about PTSD. Autumn 2016 he taught a writing workshop to veterans. Spring 2017 he'll speak to students who are using his memoir in a history class, at Indiana University, South Bend.

Affield's mother, Barbara, lived an unusual life. He began a series of interviews with her, hoping to tell her story, never suspecting that the key to it lay decomposing in an old building seventy feet from where they sat visiting in the old farmhouse. After she died in 2010, Affield and his sister discovered and salvaged their family history, dating back to 1822. Over the past six years, he has spent countless hours studying, scanning, and transcribing the documents he discovered locked in the Chickenhouse on his childhood homestead.

Affield lives with his wife, Patti, in a log cabin overlooking a small lake in northern Minnesota, where they enjoy feeding birds. They have three children and several grandchildren. Sadly, their son, Jeff, died in 2015. Affield continues to write, study writing, and psychology. His greatest fear: that he dies before all the stories are told.