A Sugary Frosting: A Memoir of a Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage

by Denis Ledoux, Martha Blowen

Overview

A Sugary Frosting / A Memoir of A Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage and How I Survived Being a Preacher's Kid This memoir reveals an underside of being the preacher's kid, a public role that is rife with challenges of supporting your minister father and your minister's-wife mother and of becoming yourself, a person they may not have expected to come out of their household. Relationships in this memoir are portrayed honestly and sometimes not flatteringly. A Sugary Frosting, a phrase derived from the late Martha Blowen's journals, is a memoir of surviving religious idealism and inherited belief to undertake to become one’s self. WHAT YOU'LL ENJOY A Sugary Frosting is a step through the 1950s and 1960s that will bring the life of those years to the fore—at least as it was lived in a parsonage. In its pages, you will observe: • the viciousness of the "White Church" whose members sent hate notes to the minister. • the minister's little girl showing her rosebud petticoat to the church ladies. • women going to church wearing gloves—even in summer. • the minister's daughter smoking pot and telling her parents it was incense. • what it can feel like to be a superior lyric soprano and not wanting to sing. • going to an elite private school and hating it. • being bullied by a high school teacher. • living a life where everything had to be nice-nice. • her parents' anti-war protests that lead to being dismissed from a pulpit These—and more—stories, told artfully and insightfully, will keep you reading long past when you should be asleep. In A Sugary Frosting / A Girlhood Spent in a Parsonage, the hero comes to the realization that the religious beliefs she has inherited do not fit comfortably. From early on, she wonders "What does it mean 'to love Jesus?'" She struggles to make belief and experience mesh but as she writes, "I was too young to understand, but I knew my own experience and not belief had to be my guide."

Product Details

BN ID:	2940153103563
Publisher:	Denis Ledoux
Publication date:	07/01/2016
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

WRITE FROM THE INSIDE OUT I believe in the power of telling our personal and family stories. These are our hero's journeys, and by telling them we honor ourselves and the people we have come from. An important early task for the writer is go inside and find the story that is worth telling. The story is not about "nice" words; it is about honest words, visceral words. LIFESTORIES FEED US Stories have always played an important role in my life. I grew up in a three-generation home with paternal grandparents who lived upstairs. I heard tales of my extended family and their history recounted by the family storyteller, my grandmother Ledoux. These stories were a food for my soul. I could not get enough of them, and her gift to me was that she was a voluble, entertaining storyteller. I began writing as a short-story writer, drawing on family characters, settings, and stories for my fiction. In 1989, I won the Maine Fiction Award for Mountain Dance & Other Stories. My other titles include What Became of Them and Other Stories from Franco-America (1988), and Lives in Translation: An Anthology of Contemporary Franco-American Writings (which I edited in 1990). In 1992, I published (and it is still in print) Turning Memories Into Memoirs / A Handbook for Writing Lifestories; in 1996, The Photo Scribe / How to Tell the Stories Behind Your Photos; in 2009, The Consumer's Guide to Ghostwriting, in 2013, a memoir—We Were Not Spoiled. E-publication includes the books listed here in Smashwords as well as others. MAKING THE LEAP TO BECOMING A MEMOIR PROFESSIONAL It was a natural leap from my own family stories to helping others to record their stories in well-written accounts that apply all the techniques of fiction writing to autobiography, family reminiscence, and scrapbooking. In 1996, I was honored as Lifewriting Professional of the Year by the Association of Personal Historians. THE MEMOIR NETWORK Today, I continue to work as a writer, educator, teacher, autobiography co-author, memoir-writing coach, editor and publisher. I direct The Memoir Network, an international group of lifestory writing teachers who use my method and materials to lead the popular Turning Memories® and Photo Scribe® workshops and programs. My Memoir Network offers Memoir Professional Packages for individuals wishing to do what we call memoir work in their communities. [http://thememoirnetwork.com/memoir-professional-packages/] Please inquire if you are interested in becoming a Memoir Professional. BUILD YOUR MEMOIR-WRITING LIBRARY You will find a number of my memoir-writing e-books on Smashwords. Begin to purchase them now so as to develop your memoir-writing library. These are the best memoir-writing books available anywhere at any price. BEYOND THE BOOKS If you need more than these great books, give me call at 207-353-5454 for a free consultation to determine whether coaching, editing, or ghostwriting is a good fit for you. Keep writing and stay in the memoir conversation.

Martha Blowen majored in English at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine. She was book designer and business partner in The Memoir Network, a premier memoir writing company. Besides writing and design, Martha’s gifts were in papermaking, her lyric soprano voice, parenting great progeny and curating other people’s art work. She and Denis Ledoux were the parents of two and made a home together for 31 years. She died in 2008 of intraductal breast cancer.