SOMETIMES, YOU JUST HAVE to read a book. You love (or know!) the author, the subject compels you, something on the dust jacket sucks you in, a review is so provocative you cannot skip it…I have hundreds of different paths to reading, but the one I took to my latest favorite read is roundabout, for sure–and yet, at least for my life here on TSP, it feels totally inevitable.
Gabrielle Burton is a writer, and mother to five filmmaker daughters, one of whom was my classmate in college. Somehow, Facebook asked me to become a fan of my friend Ursula’s mother’s new novel, and not thinking much about it, I did. Excerpts appeared on Facebook intermittently, and I read some of them with interest, but as with too much of the information that crosses my brain, even that which I know I cleave to, if only I had the time to fix upon it, my awareness of the novel dissipated before it caught my focus.
And then I read this dual review on NPR of not just Burton’s new novel, but of the somewhat eccentric memoir that narrates and preceded its creation.
Searching for Tamsen Donner tells the story of a determined feminist, dedicated writer, and mother to five daughters, who, in the 1970s, decided she just had to take her husband and kids on a journey across in America in the footsteps of our country’s most notorious group of pioneers, the Donner party. Burton’s explanation of why she had to make the trip, and what she and the girls found there, had me staying up late, reading in lieu of sleeping or working, shivering in recognition of my own endless painful seesaw between work and family.
Burton’s voice is strong, and funny, universal and iconoclast at once. If you are a woman who does the awkward dance of loving your family, hard, and craving immersion in your own creative life, this book will resonate in your gut like the beat of a huge drum.
Next up on my nightstand: Burton’s long-gestating novel about Tamsen Donner, and her journey, Impatient With Desire. Not to worry, I’ll be reporting back.
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Dear Paige,
Thank you for your warm thoughtful words re my book, Searching for Tamsen Donner. I’m glad it resonated with you though, in one way, I wish it hadn’t–wish that painful seesaw you struggle with was history. There have been advances and lots of them. Still… Until men get equally involved in childcare–both physically and emotionally–the burden of trying to balance it all is going to in the main fall on women. That these are burdens of love make the balancing act more complex and harder. If it’s any consolation, your generation is aeons ahead of mine–we struggled to articulate the questions and felt guilty even asking them–you know the questions and your right to ask them. I’m proud of your achievements and optimistic. Onward & upward.