About this item
A long-awaited memoir from an award-winning novelist - a candid, riveting account of her complicated, bohemian childhood and her return home to care for her ailing mother.. In March 2020, Martha McPhee, her husband, and their two almost-grown children set out for her childhood home in New Jersey, where she finds herself grappling simultaneously with a mother slipping into severe dementia and a house that's been neglected of late. As Martha works to manage her mother's care and the sprawling, ramshackle property - a broken septic system, invasive bamboo, dying ash trees - she is pulled back into her childhood, almost against her will. Martha grew up at Omega Farm with her four sisters, five stepsiblings, mother, and stepfather, in a house filled with art, people, and the kind of chaos that was sometimes benevolent, sometimes more sinister.
About the Author
A few years ago, when a legendary bond trader claimed he could transform Martha McPhee into a booming Wall Street success, she toyed with the notion -- but wrote Dear Money instead. McPhee has been honored with fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts and The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 2002 she was nominated for a National Book Award. Her essays and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers including The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Newark Star Ledger, Vogue, More, Harper's Bazaar, Self, Traveler, Travel & Leisure, among many others. She lives in New York City with her children and husband, the poet and writer Mark Svenvold.
