Schroon Lake - Softcover

Lueza Thirkield Gelb

3.33

9 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0977880028 ISBN 13: 9780977880027

Publisher: Pulpit Harbor Press, 2007

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The memoir of a girl, born in 1931 - the start of the Great Depression - to wealth and privilege, watching the money go down the drain until there was nothing. She watched, listened and absorbed her family disintegrating yet staying together in a multi-generational household. It wasn't only money that drove them apart. The family survived at great emotional cost, the girl watching and listening and finally here, telling the story.

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About the Author:

Lueza Thirkield Gelb was born in Plainfield, New Jersey, in the first part of the twentieth century, two years after the stock market crash, and grew up in the Adirondacks before and during the Second World War. A graduate of Wells College, she has a Ph.D. in history from Teachers College, Columbia University, and has taught at Pace University and Marymount-Manhattan College. She lives in New York City with her husband, Bruce Gelb.

Review:

In an age in which dissembling sometimes seems central to the culture, this compelling memoir is notable for its candor. Lueza Thirkield Gelb describes her mysterious father, adored by his daughter yet disliked by his son, and her hard-working mother who was keenly aware of how much her love for her husband had cost her. Lueza and I grew up together in Schroon Lake. The Thirkields faced culture shock when they moved from the status of privileged "summer people" to the hardscrabble year-round life of the Adirondack Mountains in the Depression and World War II. Each member of the extended family had courage. All faced different sets of problems and all, for the most part, kept their secrets to themselves. Lueza Gelb describes her relationship with each family member. Her story of her role as an observant child, constantly calculating how to grow up in this troubled household, is wisely and beautifully told. --Amazon.com

Living my early years in Poland, I was drawn to American literature, like many of my generation, in search of the mystery of a far-away land of adventure. That search often took me on unexpected spiritual tours. Reading Schroon Lake reopened that world to me with high intensity. I learned more about the American Spirit by reading this book than through my personal experience of 17 years in America. I would wholeheartedly recommend this story to the American Studies scholars in my native Poland and elsewhere, and to anyone who enjoys reading a fascinating book. Lueza Thirkield Gelb used her magic "pen" to create a vivid and moving memoir. --Amazon.com

Thirty pages into Schroon Lake, I was already telling friends, "sensitive, poignant and very well written." Lueza's focus on the self-inflicted wounds of her loyal, but too often resentful, father and mother succeeds because she so deftly brings the reader inside her own skin. Only those of you whose families have been flawless will fail to gain insights into your own parents, your own brothers and sisters and, indeed, yourselves. Do read it! --Amazon.com

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