Live and Love: Family Lessons

Live and Love is a memoir of family experiences, sometimes painful and at other times humorous. It portrays family life throughout most of the twentieth century in both urban and rural settings. It is about middle-class values and aspirations, the struggle to survive the depression of the 1930s, the world wars, and the aftermath of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s and the process of growing up with grandmothers, parents, children, pets, and friends. It depicts the experiences of a mother and her four children, their interaction, personalities, and search for a secure and stable existence. It recounts travel at home and abroad and desire to reach beyond a parochial existence.

The lessons drawn from this account include learning to respect our elders and their wisdom and counsel, to seek personal autonomy in the face of peer and family pressures, and to turn setbacks and disappointments into achievements and success.