Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter's Memoir

This book never grabbed me the way "The Glass Castle" did. I don't think it is appropriate to judge someone else's life. That is why I am issuing three stars for the amazing ability to complete a novel. I found myself bored many times throughout the story and I felt it ended very quickly after so many years. I would have liked more of the after story. What happened the day the Mom finally leaves this earth? How did they all find their mates? After such a troubling childhood, "what happened". This is not a bad book and the childhood sounded tough, but it is not written very well.

A magazine I was reading while waiting in an office featured a blurb about "Moonlight on Linoleum" comparing it to Jeannette Walls' memoir "Glass Castle." That's all it took for me to purchase Terry Helwig's book. What a disappointment! The book is a simple and fast read, but empty of details and passion about Helwig's troubled childhood. When I finished it, I really didn't care about her or her family. Helwig spent her childhood trying to protect her mother, making excuses for her, covering up for her and enabling her to continue her dangerous life-style. Maybe that's the problem with her book; because the book just scratches the surface of what may be a terrific story, Helwig continues to protect her mother by telling her story using pastels instead of rich colors.

This is a beautiful memoir that doesn't manipulate the reader's emotions. Told in simply elegant narrative, the book allows the reader to take a journey with the author as she tells her story of a difficult, yet resilient childhood. I worked with Terry Helwig on the "One World, One Thread" project and never imagined or knew she had been through so much. I am glad to have learned her amazing story while enjoying a very captivating book.

Amazing memoir, couldn't put it down, reads like a novel, yet is one womans story of how she broke a cycle of family destruction passed down through generations. Impossible to believe she went through so much in her young life and has come out on the "other" side with such love and compassion for living. Five Stars from me... I can hardly wait to share this memoir with friends and family!!

Through exquisite writing, Ms Helwig takes the reader along on the ragged journey through her childhood with the vividness and gentleness of a young girl telling a bedtime story. Since we are allowed to peer through a child's eyes, the poverty, neglect and ignorance somehow does not horrify us. (No cheap pulls for emotion here!) Rather we are given a chance to become the little girl, share her adventures, grow up along with her and find strength and inspiration amidst the chaos. The story is so engrossing that I stayed up all night to finish the book! Now I want to read it again to savor the deceptively "simple" writing style.

Sad story of a disfunctional family led by an alcoholic mother, told by one of her daughters. It reads as a soap opera, but the reality is that this is a personal memoir written by one of the children. Interesting at times, but slow moving and repetitive in the middle. The reader should finish the book cheering that the sisters survived their troubled youth, but instead my reaction was one of relief that there was no more to read.Moonlight on Linoleum: A Daughter's Memoir

I love the honesty and humor and authenticity of Teri's writing. She explores the duality of humanity as she pens her memoir. We know she will triumph in the end but we still mourn the little girl's lost childhood and innocence.

Terry's mother Carola Jean married at age fourteen (1948) and became a tenant farmer's wife. Terry was born eleven months later into a house without running water. Sister Vicki arrived. At age sixteen, as mother of two under two, Carola was broke and divorced (for the first time). Carola took the children to Colorado and her family. She married Davy. Little sister Patricia was born. Carola sent the two older girls to their biological father "for the summer" but did not return to pick them up - until nearly two years later.
In that time Carola had divorced and remarried Davy and sent Patricia to live with Davy's parents. They moved to Texas where Davy worked in the oilfields. Terry would not be allowed to contact her biological father again until she was eighteen.)
Another sister was born. Carola frequented bars. She and Davy fought. Terry would wake to find a man climbing out of her mother's bedroom window, Davy being gone for work.
Then a move to Colorado. Carola got migraines and was often in a fog. Terry learned to care for her sisters (she was in the fifth grade). They took in a niece, to make six girls under the age of twelve in the house. More boyfriends while Davy was away for work. More moves. Terry continued to care for her younger sisters, sometimes when her mother was hundreds of miles away with a boyfriend. Another move.
When Terry was fourteen she overheard a friend ask Carola if she wasn't too hard on Terry. That experience released Terry from the burden of trying to please her mother.
Another move. When Terry began high school she was asked where she was from. "What could I say? I am from everywhere and nowhere."
Carola divorced Davy and married "Mr. Rodeo." The girls transitioned to life on a farm. Then Carola's short nursing career ended under suspicion (drugs). Soon Carola and Mr. Rodeo were fighting, then one night, gun shots. Carola took her girls to Davy, now living in California. He took them in. After a few months Carola took the two youngest girls back to Texas to divorce Mr. Rodeo. She never came back. Though not asked, Terry would not have gone with her. "Life had become more painful living with Mama than living without her."
Davy had to work in Nevada but the girls stayed in California, Terry taking care of them. She graduated from high school and began taking some college level courses and working.
Her Mama called, asking her to move closer to Texas. Terry and a friend did, finding jobs. Her mother attempted suicide at age thirty-three. Terry was visiting and managed to get her to the doctor before she bled to death. Terry was eighteen. Carola was admitted to a mental hospital. Terry became responsible for her two sisters there (one having been sent to their birth father). When Carola was discharged she never came for her children but Terry ultimately insisted they go live with her.
Carola married twice more before she died in 1974 of an accidental drug overdose.
Terry ends her memoir with a reunion tour of "the sisters" through Texas towns.

Terry's writing, at times, is well done. For example, "The small oasis of normalcy and nurture that year and a half in Grand Junction came at suppertime, when my sisters and I gathered around our kitchen picnic table." And, "Mama's fury had become as bitter as the howling winds sweeping through an icy canyon. No matter how hard we tried, we constantly fell short..." The majority of the writing, however, is nondescript, near boring at times. Perhaps that reflects her conflicted view of her mother. "That's how it was with Mama. One moment I admired her more than anyone, and the next I wished she would become someone else."

Don't expect any "Christian witness" in this book. In an interview at the back of the book Terry is asked how she was so "resilient." She said she always felt connected to something greater than herself but does not identify who or what that was. She adds that taking care of her sisters gave her a great sense of purpose. This is a great story of one woman's survival but none of the credit or glory goes to God.

I received an egalley of this book from the publisher for the purpose of this review.

I enjoy biographical books. One of my favorites is "Glass Castles". I started out thinking I was going to love this book as well but found that it was just to repetitious. The story is one of her factual life so I'm not certain how the author tells the story without the reader feeling, "here we go again." She's a remarkable woman who endured much to have a successful outcome. Her relationships with her sisters is inspiring. She tells the story of her Mother with a loving heart.