Bøger af Eleanore Hill

A chance encounter puts together an unlikely pair: a woman living alone in midlife, and an apparent drifter, who opens up her world--and then disappears. After many doubts and misgivings, a resolution is reached.

This story, told to the deceased, involves the whole family, and more to be revealed, as this event unfolds over the following weeks, and into the near future. Not only was the precipitating death unexpected, but the interactions and revelations afterward affect almost every member of the gathering. Based on a true event.

Rarely do we find an honest account of incest in the news. Though it has long been taboo in almost every culture, and for sound biological reasons, the occurrences of incest continue in many families and communities. Having a rational conversation about it, however, is difficult to achieve. Do not expect lurid accounts of threats and torture and kinky S&M from this book. This story is told with names changed, from the point of view of the girl-a straightforward account of the relationship of father and daughter over nearly twenty years. As she grew into young adulthood, the father became protective, but not possessive. And the girl-becoming-woman began to understand her strengths, and to test them-eventually to break free, marry and have a productive life of her own. For most of the time, the relationship was a secret from the rest of the family, and certainly from the rest of the world. Eleanore Hill has chosen to stand up and proclaim herself a whole person of her own, and to share her experience publicly. Few have had the courage to do so, which makes this narrative especially valuable. In fact, when the book first came out in 1985, it garnered the Rhodora Prize, and was picked up by one of the major publishers, at a time when incest was scarcely talked about. These days, with digital publishing, many more writers have committed their stories to print, emboldened by Eleanore Hill's forthrightness with the "secret." Some publishers simply aim to titillate with the topic, hoping to benefit from prurient curiosity. For them, there will always be an audience. For the more serious-minded, this three-dimensional account of the topic brings it alive in a real sense, not as a cautionary tale or a scold, but to see, as it were, behind the headlines, as a human story that needs to be told, and told with integrity.

This story of two decades of a marriage documents a catalog of changes accepted and changes refused, between two people who grew up in the Forties and Fifties. By the Seventies, the world had changed and so had they. And so had the marriage. The uncommon word each-other is the main topic of this book-the relationship of two people in which every action or thought, whether expressed or not, affects the partner. Eachother is precious when it works, treacherous when both feel trapped with the other. The Last American Housewife is the second volume in the Marty Series, following The Family Secret. The third volume will be Period Pieces, the post-marriage years.

This third book in the Marty Series brings Marty into her own, after the divorce, yet with her ex-husband living next door. She is now free to discover her own needs and desires. Her old father is sheltered in her house, and she even briefly remarries Alex, who had suffered a brain tumor and a personality change.

"To become a landlady, it usually takes going through hard times. Most landladies I know are either divorced or widowed. They are not the women who have money to invest in property and do so with the idea of renting out that spare room. No one would be a landlady if they could avoid it. Down through history, women opened their homes to boarders to get by financially after their husband left or died. Becoming a landlady is a process, never planned, and not a choice a woman would make if she could help it. It's not fun. You can make the best of it if you have a sense of humor. The making of a landlady requires that you have a house with an extra room. This is the basic landlady position...."

We Were the Divorcing Generation These short retro glimpses were written between 1962 to 1982, the twenty years when women got old. They went into marriage, had babies, served a "master" in the way of a husband whom they tried to please. The home became a beautiful trap ultimately. We married in our early twenties, went into it as butter ies, and came out as caterpillars twenty years later. We were the divorcing generation.... These short retro glimpses were written between 1962 to 1982, the twenty years when women got old. They went into marriage, had babies, served a "master" in the way of a hus- band whom they tried to please. The home became a beautiful trap ultimately. We married in our early twenties, went into it as butter ies, and came out as caterpillars twenty years later. We were the divorcing generation. Went into what society expected young women between the ages of 18 to 21, to do. If you didn't marry, you became an "old maid." Movies like A Streetcar Named Desire, showed Vivien Leigh already "over the hill" in her thir- ties with the likes of Marlon Brando, in his twenties, rubbing her nose in it. Just watch any of the old sepia-colored movies. Women did not go sit at sidewalk cafes and sip co ee. There weren't any back then; and a woman's place was in the home doing her housework and tending the children. We were still close to a Biblical foundation that taught paying attention to 9 the skin was a sin, in a sense. Of course, if you look at your mother's and grandmothers' old black- and-white photos taken with a Brownie box camera, you see that they grew old as they were suppose to, once "the bloom of youth" wore o and "let nature take its course." Anyone other than professional models, movie stars or professional sex workers, had no excuse to keep looking "beautiful." Chemicals in makeup back then was a jar of Ponds face cream, or any homemade concoction made from goose grease and lye, or rose petals soaked in water, clay packs, beef steaks, chilled tea bags and the original astringent, besides splashing cold water in your face, Witch Hazel. So, the average woman was not much more than a plain-faced nun. Dolling up and going out was a rare thing for the middle class woman of those times. Most had never entered a bar, smoked a cigarette, or even drank anything but lemonade. These stories depict the fear and ever vigilant eye of such a woman, as she sees her rst crowsfoot at the corner of her eye in her late twenties, entering her thirties, tending her children and husband, who, in this case is a hard-to-please critic. As she steams up over laundry, the stove cooking dinner, her lipstick crawls up the lines forming in her upper lip, like mercury in a thermometer, she looks in the mirror and truly believes it's all over for her, being "young." Today, of course, there are no age clothes where toddlers are dressed like dolls and old women have to wear old woman clothes. The times have put grand- mothers and grandkids in the same sweats and tennis shoes. Eleanor Roosevelt died at 77, looking 100 years old. Jane Fonda, at 77, looks 16, if you don't get too close. Dyeing your hair, get- ting a nip and a tuck, liposuction, llers and extractions, are all okay. Between 1960 and 1980, women would have been consid- ered vain, which was looked upon as fear of growing old. You were suppose to get glasses, a gut, loose apping upper arms, false teeth, and wrinkles. Wrinkles! It was enough to scare you into obedience, so you wouldn't end up "out there" without the means to wash your face and roll your hair. Look at the boy and 10 girl twins, the Brinkleys: Christy still looks like she did as a teen model. Her twin brother looks like someone's grandpa. Times have changed; but these stories show the astute eye of a house- wife who looked for signs of aging, almost obsessively, however educated and accomplished she was and would become in her later life. She is in her 20's and 30's in these pieces.