Between Them: Remembering My Parents

Ford, Richard

3.73

2,987 ratings by Goodreads

9781538415924: Between Them: Remembering My Parents

ISBN 10: 1538415925 ISBN 13: 9781538415924

Publisher: HarperAudio, 2017

From Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times-bestselling author Richard Ford, a memoir in two parts on the lives of his parents -- a stirring meditation on memory, connection, and love, asking how we can better understand ourselves by knowing the ones who made us.

When do we start considering our parents as real, whole people, with lives that stretch beyond our own? Edna and Parker Ford were married for fifteen years before they had their son, Richard, in 1944, and settled in a small house on Congress Street in Jackson, Mississippi. They met in Little Rock, both young and childless, and traveled together throughout the Deep South. Parker sold laundry starch out of his company Ford, a big, softspoken salesman, with natural charm, while Edna assisted, small, buoyant and black-haired beside him. Unusually for the time, as the Depression engulfed whole families in austerity, Edna and Parker lived freely, out of hotels in Pensacola, Birmingham, Mobile, and New Orleans.

For Richard Ford, the question of what his parents felt, dreamed of, and loved independently of their son is made all the more significant by the brevity of their lives. In Between Them, the award-winning storyteller and creator of the beloved Frank Bascombe crafts two equally indelible characters -- his mother and father -- each representing unknowable swaths of time on either side of his childhood. Parker, who died suddenly when Ford was only sixteen, dominates the first half of the author's life and of his parents' story; Edna takes up the second.

Ford brings his trademark candor, wit, and empathetic storytelling to the most intimate of landscapes: that ofhis love for two people who remain a mystery. Mining poignant details of his life in the American South during some iconic periods of the 20th century, Between Them illuminates the writer's past as well as his beliefs on memory, relationships, and self-knowledge. ''People,'' he writes, ''are always more than we know.''

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From the Back Cover:

How is it that we come to consider our parents as people with rich and intense lives that include but also exclude us? Richard Ford’s parents—Edna, a feisty, pretty Catholic-school girl with a difficult past; and Parker, a sweet-natured, soft-spoken traveling salesman—were rural Arkansans born at the turn of the twentieth century. Married in 1928, they lived “alone together,” traveling throughout the south. Eventually they had one child, born late, in 1944.

For Ford, the questions of what his parents dreamed of become a striking portrait of American life in the mid-century. Between Them is his vivid image of where his life began and where his parents’ lives found their greatest satisfaction.

Bringing his celebrated candor, wit, and intelligence to this most intimate and mysterious of landscapes—our parents’ lives—the award-winning storyteller and creator of the iconic Frank Bascombe delivers an unforgettable exploration of memory, intimacy, and love.

About the Author:

Richard Ford is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of the Bascome novels and the New York Times bestselling novel Canada and Let Me Be Frank with You. He is the author of the renowned story collections Rock Springs and A Multitude of Sins. He is the 2016 recipient of the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature in Spain.

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