Silent Echoes - Marilyn Fowler

Hang on. It's a bumpy ride.

Silent Echoes is a memoir with psychological undertones spanning three generations. It begins with life in an orphanage and moves into the rich, sweet life of the 1920's, through the tumultuous Stock Market crash and Great Depression years. The story recounts this historical period, and brings the national trauma to life through a vivid portrayal of one family's personal struggle to go on as they fall from wealth to poverty and homelessness. It guides readers through this entire decade with a bone deep exploration into the family's inner pain and desperation as their situation tests their strength to survive. Characters are portrayed with poignant care as they experience not only loss of material possessions, but of trust in a secure future, of loved ones through death and separation, losses that wound the very soul. As their story moves out of the Depression years through several wars and beyond, residual scars become apparent as they influence the character's self-defeating choices for some years to come.

Silent Echoes follows the lives of two determined women, a mother and daughter, who are stubborn enough to get back up every time life dashes them to their knees, but with the ability to laugh through their tears, even when the sun doesn't shine. They struggle to survive in a world that makes no sense, a world that seems stacked against them from the start. Insight into these characters is developed not with preaching, but through their response to life as they see it, revealing childhood fears and confusion hidden beneath their conscious awareness. The mother's fear of abandonment and lack of self-worth, and the daughter's sense of invalidation and feeling she must deal with life alone become defeating beliefs from their past. As these messages silently echo into the present, they are subtly revealed as motivators to lost opportunities, wrong turns in the road and disillusioned hearts. Every obstacle becomes a challenge to test the women's weaknesses and strengths, to find meaning and become whole.

Silent Echoes explores life's many seasons, some as sweet as summer's tender touch and some as bleak as winter snow, but each with a lesson to be learned. It clearly portrays the character's life situations as they scrounge to pay bills, assume the role of mother and father to their children, encounter stormy relationships, suffer emotional exhaustion, and deal with mother-daughter conflict and end of life issues involving elder care as the mother reaches declining years. When loss and defeat tear their hearts apart, they feel they can't go on. But they do. They reach deep inside and find strength to rise above their plight, revealing inner ability and resourcefulness to survive, until insight brings understanding, forgiveness and beautiful freedom.

Silent Echoes' setting takes place mostly in the southern culture of Florida, but moves through Detroit, Pennsylvania, Texas and Las Vegas on a most unstable journey that always brings the family back to their beloved south, the only place that feels like home.

Silent Echoes is a story in which readers will see themselves, feel the pain of the struggle, yet find reassurance that they are not alone and they too can survive. They will be entertained by the humorous situations that lighten the character's burdens throughout their journey, like when the mother gives up her bra long before the Women's Lib movement. This is a story readers will take with them and not forget.

EAN: 9781432749491