GO PICK PEAS

Verbout’s debut memoir centers on a childhood with a lack of parental connection.

The author was born into a financially struggling home in the Midwest in 1945, the fifth child into an eventual family of nine. Her father, she says, made his living as an inventor with a career blighted by alcoholism, subjecting her emotionally detached mother to abuse and their children to an unpredictable life. By the time Verbout was 14, the family had moved 10 times; they would stay in houses until forced to evict for nonpayment of rent, she says, as their father was unable to hold down jobs. The instability was evident not only in Verbout’s poignant recollections of repeatedly starting at new schools, but also of a bizarre episode in which the family briefly lived, due to her father’s good fortune at work, in a medieval-style castle in Warner, Illinois. The contrast between these short, sharp periods in her young life is highlighted when the family appears in this majestic home in a local newspaper story—followed by living in a succession of houses with no indoor plumbing. Although Verbout’s memoir starts a bit jarringly in the middle of her story, it backtracks to amble rhythmically through her childhood and adolescence, and her prose is adept at weaving together happy and difficult moments. Passages concentrating on her father will make readers’ hearts sink: “It was like I had two dads,” she writes at one point. “One who worked and brought in a salary to support us and one who didn’t work, and remained bitter, destitute and derogatory.” However, her account of her relationship with her numerous siblings shows the strength of the human spirit. Her older sister Kerin, she notes, served as a surrogate mother, and the author idolized her brother Marshall, who also became a parental substitute. Overall, Verbout is a gifted storyteller, invoking the senses, nostalgia, and crafting a warm ending, all while trying to understand her parents—particularly her mother, whom she recognizes for her resiliency.

A thoughtful and affecting remembrance of a challenging upbringing.