Catherine Gildiner is a riot! I have read her two memoirs, Too Close to the Falls and After the Falls. She has also written a novel called Seduction. Catherine is a very funny writer and just as hilarious when she has done author events with us. After the Falls was released in paperback at the end of April. This is an excerpt from her recent newsletter to her fans:
A long, windy winter There are actually a few things that are new. Thank God it is spring and every bud is new and glorious in a pristine pale green at my farm. (It is prob
ably already summer in most of the US.) We are recovering from a mild hurricane that took out six trees by the roots and then proceeded to blow down my drive shed which was the size of a barn and had withstood all gales for 125 years. I found the trees thrown hundreds of feet, and the drive shed looked like the house of straw in The Three Little Pigs after the wolf blew it down. I hope you all made it through the winter in better shape than my drive shed.
For those of you who think that farm life is safer than city life, read on. Last August I was walking along a country dirt road. A tractor came down the road hauling a huge hay baler on the back. A wire from one of the bales had worked its way loose and hung flapping off the side of the truck. The wire caught my foot and wound itself around me like a serpent, threw me up in the air twelve feet, and then dragged me behind the tractor. I broke a few bones in my neck and back. I guess I went haywire. However, it is hard to keep a 62-year-old angry Irish high-jumper down. I am again up and hopping and writing the third volume of my memoir called The Long Way Home. It is about my life from ages 21 to 25 in England, the US, and finally Canada. Stay tuned for that one.
Her memoirs are just like this excerpt - full of serious events seen through a veil of humour and laughter. If you ever need a pick-me-up, read either of her memoirs. They are my grumpy day cure! -Bronwyn
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