Mooring at the Millrace

Susan, a baby-boomer, grew up in Durham, Pennsylvania, a town of seventy-five people. This farming community was settled by her ancestors, German Lutheran immigrants, who arrived in the 1700's. Her parents were older, educated, clear on right and wrong, kind and generous. This was as safe and secure a start as any child could be given. And, yet, life happens. When there is a strong, dependable mooring -- something to steady you in the storms -- does it makes a difference?
Mooring at the Millrace re-tells stories told around the dining room table, like Uncle Charlie's fall from grace into both a tea party and an outhouse - at different times! Mooring tracks the lives of Susan's grandmothers born before 1900. They were each desperately impoverished, which curiously created in both a desperate determination. Mooring recounts deep love and shocking tragedy. Life was composed of quiet heroism, despicable betrayals, and twists and turns which were totally underserved, excruciatingly painful, and, sometimes, sweeter than imaginable. People teach us how to live and how to die. Misery and mercy are along for the journey.
The sixty years from 1948 to 2008 were tumultuous and transforming. This personal recounting will resonate deeply because it is much less unique than it is universal: our humanity bonds and binds us. We may each have a different millrace, but we each have one. For better and worse, we are moored "from whence we came." When and how we might go on from there . . . AH, that is such a story as this one: Mooring at the Millrace.