Wallen, Amy E

Lincoln. 2018. March 2018. University of Nebraska Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Wrappers. 9780803296954. American Lives - TOBIAS WOLFF, series editor. 5 1/2 x 8 1/2. 5 photographs . 294 pages . paperback. . keywords: Memoir World and National Affairs. FROM THE PUBLISHER - When Amy E. Wallen's southern, blue-collar, peripatetic family was transferred from Ely, Nevada, to Lagos, Nigeria, she had just turned seven. From Nevada to Nigeria and on to Peru, Bolivia, and Oklahoma, the family wandered the world, living in a state of constant upheaval. When We Were Ghouls follows Wallen's recollections of her family who, like ghosts, came and went and slipped through her fingers, rendering her memories unclear. Were they a family of grave robbers, as her memory of the pillaging of a pre-Incan grave site indicates? Are they, as the author's mother posits, hideous people? Or is Wallen's memory out of focus? In this quick-paced and riveting narrative, Wallen exor cizes these haunted memories to clarify the nature of her family and by extension her own character. Plumbing the slipperiness of memory and confronting what it means to be a good human, When We Were Ghouls links the fear of loss and mortality to childhood ideas of permanence. It is a story about family, surely, but it is also a representation of how a combination of innocence and denial can cause us to neglect our most precious earthly treasures: not just our children but the artifacts of humanity and humanity itself. Amy Wallen's beautiful memoir, replete with fantastic stories, will carry you across continents and introduce you to amazing characters. - Claire Messud, New York Times bestselling author of The Emperor's Children Bold, original. . This memoir is full of life and life's oppositions, both the light and the dark, which the author ultimately learns to embrace and celebrate. - Sue William Silverman, author of The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew Haunting, exquisitely written. . A perfect balance of dark and light forces in this memory palace. - Phillip Lopate, author of Portrait Inside My Head inventory #43456 ISBN: 9780803296954.