Cashing Out and Coming Back

CASHING OUT AND COMING BACK is a humorous personal narrative about "cashing out" my Berkeley inner city condo in the San Francisco Bay Area real estate boom to follow my dream of living in a historical house in a small town (Albany) in Oregon without really knowing what I was getting into. I tell the story as a memoir, a version of which is contemplated by many urban dwellers who yearn for a more affordable and pastoral life Elsewhere, and by many women in particular, who want to make a big life change, which doesn't necessarily involve a lover or a red Jag. The major theme is appearance and reality and the fantasies we talk ourselves into. The big picture, beyond my moving and regretting it, is the dying economy and culture of small town America, the unemployment and meth use evident in the phenomenon of the "Dewy Bikers," men who cycle the streets of Albany because they have lost their driving licenses due to substance abuse. In an even larger sense, the book is about various states of home and homelessness. In later chapters I become an advocate for two children who are hapless victims of the problems of their town.

Margo Peller Feeley was born in Minnesota and has lived in New York City; Guilford, Connecticut; Madison, Wisconsin; Berkeley, California; Albany, Oregon and Israel. She earned a Ph.D in English literature from City University of New York and has taught composition and literature in the U.S. and in Jerusalem. Her short stories and essays are published on three continents--America, Japan, and Great Britain, and she has received many prizes and honors including First Runner Up in nonfiction for CASHING OUT AND COMING BACK in the 2006 University of New Orleans Writing Contest. She has a grown up son and daughter and three Tonkinese cats. She lives in a cottage with a garden in West Berkeley and never wants to move again.