Publisher's Synopsis
MOURNING GLORY My childhood unraveled like a windstorm. I had to fight all of hell to keep from losing my mind. Daddy was never committed, but by all normal standards, he had to be just a little insane. My mother couldn't keep me out of harms way when she was just as afraid as me. I couldn't wait to be grown. - but, looking back, I was just a kid gone haywire, thinking she was grown 'cause she'd gotten raped and molested a time or two. And if the truth be told I didn't have a single intelligible clue for what it meant to be married and pushing out babies. Yet, here I was, Edwina Jordan --thrust into womanhood, marriage and motherhood, all at the same time. Well, it was too much! - I mean ... The pain only got harder, the truth darker - and - I ... I just stopped fighting and began wasting away under the gruesome allure of illicit drugs. Hell - what was I supposed to do? But, "good fruit don't come from bad seed" Aunt Trudy taught me that and it has always left me feeling worthless; sort of like a thorn bush in a garden of morning glories. I used to wish for more but somewhere along the way my hopes got shot full-o' holes and my dreams upped and left to avoid the blow. A blind man can see I'm wasting, crumbling fast and falling apart like an old newspaper full of "yesterday's news." I heard it said that people just don't bounce back from this. And I know if I don't get a hold to myself, I ain't gon' last; 'cause, I will become yesterday's news; lost in a lousy legacy of lethargic rejects, (so I've been told) longing for answers in a line of dope or a loaded syringe. COMMENTS FROM THE EDITOR I found it to be a very moving and in fact, a haunting story. There is both humor and love, so it is not unmitigated. It reminds me of Dorothy Allison's, "A Bastard Out of Carolina," in some ways. It is not that the story or characters resemble hers, but it is similar in telling a story that may be hard for people to hear. So many will feel that this story needs to be told.
