With vivid memories of her very early life, Ruth Smith Meyer has spent seven decades processing what has made her feel different or unusual. Whether it was being born into a conservative Mennonite family, the differences in her physical composition, or the events of her life, they all contributed to the struggle and growth she experienced as she faced them one by one. Each of us is a unique being with our own special personality and genetic make-up. Some of us are more aware of the ...

Barely a grown woman, Rina's marriage to her imaginative and sometimes impractical dreamer husband, continually growing list of children, the impending Great Depression, and the chaos of life in general take over, moulding her into a strong woman not unlike her own parents, proving the apple does not fall far from the tree. Faced with constant moves and less than desirable circumstances, Rina relies on the Lord and her love of David and their children to see her through the toughest of tim...

As a child, Benny Ribble bears the brunt of his parents’ anger. Never good enough, he nonetheless tries to please them and hear some words of praise. When he finds himself on the receiving end of a girl’s attention and affection, he thinks he’s finally escaped the abuse he’s suffered his whole life. Sadly, his marriage soon turns into another battlefield. Every time his wife, Alma, bursts his balloon of achievement with her put-downs, he sees himself once again failing to achieve his desir...

With vivid memories of her very early life, Ruth Smith Meyer has spent seven decades processing what has made her feel different or unusual. Whether it was being born into a conservative Mennonite family, the differences in her physical composition, or the events of her life, they all contributed to the struggle and growth she experienced as she faced them one by one.Each of us is a unique being with our own special personality and genetic make-up. Some of us are more aware of the ...

In the time when women often died in childbirth and men remarried to have someone to care for the house and children, new mothers sometimes cut off relationships with the maternal grandparents. Ellie is a strong young woman faced with circumstances that are not her choice. When Ellie's older sister Regina dies at the birth of her third child, her parents request that Ellie break off her engagement to the man she loves and marry their son-in-law, John, so the children will stay in the famil...

Between 1870 and 1970, 26 million Italians left their homeland and travelled to places like Canada, Australia and the United States, in search of work. Many of them never returned to Italy. Against this historic backdrop comes the story of Rosina, a Calabrian matriarch, who worked as a midwife in an area where only one doctor served three villages. She was also the only member of the Russo family to remain in Italy after the mass migration of the 1950s. Written by Rosina’s great-great- gra...

"Phil's new book Gypsy Joker To A Hells Angel is based on 44 years as a Hells Angel. Photos & stories are a must read for all motorcycle riders" - Sonny BargerIn the early 1960s, a young Navy vet, motorcyclist, amateur photographer, and rebel named Phil Cross joined a motorcycle club called the Hells Angels. It turned out to be a bogus chapter of the club that would soon find infamy, so he switched to another club called the Night Riders. Like the bogus chapter of...

In this historically momentous memoir, the segregationist senator's mixed-race daughter speaks out about her life in the shadows.Breaking nearly eight decades of silence, Essie Mae Washington–Williams comes forward with the dramatic story of her life. Her father, the late Strom Thurmond, had been the nation's leading proponent of racial segregation. He famously undertook a twenty-four–hour filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1957, a desperate attempt to save ...

Masterfully told, marked by irony and humor as well as outrage and a barely contained sadness, Jerald Walker’s Street Shadows is the story of a young man’s descent into the “thug life” and the wake-up call that led to his finding himself again.Walker was born in a Chicago housing project and raised, along with his six brothers and sisters, by blind parents of modest means but middle-class aspirations. A boy of great promise whose parents and teachers saw success in his future, he s...

Acclaimed historian Mary Frances Berry resurrects the remarkable story of ex-slave Callie House who, seventy years before the civil-rights movement, demanded reparations for ex-slaves. A widowed Nashville washerwoman and mother of five, House (1861-1928) went on to fight for African American pensions based on those offered to Union soldiers, brilliantly targeting $68 million in taxes on seized rebel cotton and demanding it as repayment for centuries of unpaid labor. Here is the fascinating...

With the help of his son, Danny, Herman Rittman narrates his experience of the Holocaust. His story begins in Romania, where his happy childhood was interrupted when Hungarian officials sent the Jews to the Oradea ghetto, then to Auschwitz. Here the fourteen-year-old experienced unimaginablecruelty and countless deaths. He is sent to a gas chamber, only to have his life spared by Josef Mengele, the Angel of Death, in exchange for his participation in medical experiments.Hermans mov...

On December 16, 1967, five adventurous boys from one of the Island’s elite high schools, Jamaica College, set out into the majestic Blue Mountains in search of a mythical trail, endeavouring to reach its highest point, the Peak, at elevation 7402 feet. They never made it. A platoon of soldiers dispatched to the area where it was believed that the boys began their hike along the Blue Mountain Ridge, reported that they were never there or had vanished into the jungle. The soldiers turned bac...