SCAVENGING BEAUTY

Walks into the past.

In her debut memoir, Glass chronicles her years-long project of walking on every street in Santa Cruz County, California, which embedded her in a verdant natural world and afforded much quiet time for reflection. Alone amid flora and fauna, she found herself recalling her profoundly dysfunctional family and an upbringing marked by neglect and abuse. Glass grew up in Fremont, California, with three brothers and four sisters. Her mother, who eventually was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, was rageful, violent, and deeply depressed. Resentful of her children, she hit them with “fly swatters, belts, brooms, anything she could get her hands on. She pushed and shoved and yelled in our faces.” Walking out on the family when Glass was 13, her mother left her husband with five children at home. He, too, became depressed and plummeted into alcoholism. Unwashed, underfed (her mother would lock up the pantry), and uncared for, Glass was the butt of jokes at school because she was so slovenly. At 16, she was able to move out, living as a foster child with two lesbians with school-age daughters; at 18, she was on her own, eking out a living through assorted menial jobs. A friend encouraged her to return to school, which led to her career as a social worker; she focused on child welfare. Glass reveals her experiences of growing up gay, finding love and friendship, and eventually a life partner. Yet self-knowledge and acceptance are tinged with regret: “On these walks,” she writes, “I begin to allow myself to grieve for what I missed, for who I might have been, what more I might have achieved in my life if I had known how to use the energy I’d poured into surviving toward thriving instead.”

Raw and harrowing memories, gracefully recounted.