It took me years to appreciate and a lifetime of memories to reflect, but it only took a glance at my grandmother's photo hanging on my Kelly green living room wall and within minutes this story started to evolve. This photo was discovered by my mother and I back in 1976, at a vacant relative's cottage while we were travelling together in Ireland, as told in my first novel "BICENTENNIAL ABROAD: A DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE"! In 1920 when mom was only three years old her mother died in the Spanish Flu Pandemic along with her newborn baby as well as the eldest child in the family. Her life and the family's was changed forever. Mom ultimately entered the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet to become a nun when she was twenty one, but she left four years later (with about three years of college credit). She met dad, had three "rambunctious" sons and we lived in public housing on the East Side, across from the "Iconic" Snowflake Bakery, along with other great local businesses. My mother went up to Syracuse University to complete her higher education in 1960, graduated the following year, when us three were about seven, ten and eleven years old. Then about one and a half years later we moved to the West Side where mom grew up in Tipperary Hill, and on to Saint Patrick's School!
In this book there are many other stories of family roots, connections, childhood adventures and travels retold from the vivid memory of this one Son of a Nun: )