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Body Leaping Backward

Audiobook
Nonfiction: Autobiography & Memoir
Unabridged   8 hour(s)
Publication date: 07/16/2019

Body Leaping Backward

Memoir of a Delinquent Girlhood

Available from major retailers or BUY FROM AMAZON
Audio CD ISBN:9781684574018
Digital Download ISBN:9781684574001

Summary

Body Leaping Backward is the haunting and beautifully drawn story of a self-destructive girlhood, of a town and a nation overwhelmed in a time of change, and of how life-altering a glimpse of a world bigger than the one we come from can be.

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Product Description

For Maureen Stanton's proper Catholic mother, the town's maximum security prison was a way to keep her seven children in line ("If you don't behave, I'll put you in Walpole Prison!"). But as the 1970s brought upheaval to America, and the lines between good and bad blurred, Stanton's once-solid family lost its way. A promising young girl with a smart mouth, Stanton turns watchful as her parents separate and her now-single mother descends into shoplifting, then grand larceny, anything to keep a toehold in the middle class for her children. No longer scared by threats of Walpole Prison, Stanton too slips into delinquency—vandalism, breaking and entering—all while nearly erasing herself through addiction to angel dust, a homemade form of PCP that swept through her hometown in the wake of Nixon's "total war" on drugs.

Body Leaping Backward is the haunting and beautifully drawn story of a self-destructive girlhood, of a town and a nation overwhelmed in a time of change, and of how life-altering a glimpse of a world bigger than the one we come from can be.

Reviews/Praise

“Powerful and probing, Stanton's book offers a sharp portrait of a wayward girl "leaping backward" into disaster. Along the way, she reveals the way individuals are as much a product of time and place as they are of the families to which they belong. A compellingly honest coming-of-age memoir.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Engaging . . . this is a great choice for memoir readers and anyone interested in the ’70s.” —Booklist

Author Bio

Maureen Stanton, the author of Killer Stuff and Tons of Money, has been awarded the Iowa Review award, a Pushcart Prize, the American Literary Review award in nonfiction, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. Stanton teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell.