Mamma’s Boarding House

John D. Fitzgerald

Mar 2018 · Pickle Partners Publishing

About this ebook

Mamma always had a way of treating everyone as a member of her own family, of giving warmth and comfort and love to people who had known little but loneliness and misfortune. And in the rugged Utah town of Adenville in the early years of this century, there were many who needed her compassion and generosity. So when Papa died and her own children were grown, it was natural for Mamma to open her home to others.

Among her boarders were Sarah Martin, angular and tight-lipped, a schoolteacher who took to smoking cigars to win the man she loved...Alonzo Strang, a retired sea captain whose last heroic voyage was in a rowboat...the fastidious faro dealer, Floyd Thompson, who started going to church again so that he could stay at Mamma’s dining table...Mr. Hackett, Papa’s successor as editor of the Advocate, a bachelor so solitary he had almost forgotten how to live with others...and Judge Gibson, competing against the memory of a dead man for Mamma’s love.

Continuing his family reminiscences from the best-selling Papa Married a Mormon, John D. Fitzgerald presents a spirited picture of a frontier community. Adenville was a town where a gunfighter shot out his last battle strapped to a lamppost...where the townspeople singing Rock of Ages saved a man from being lynched...where a red-headed artist won his sweetheart in a mad chase across the Utah desert...and where honest conniving staved off an Indian raid.

There are moments of suspense as the townspeople rescue a child from his deranged grandfather...moments of hilarity as a pig named Beatrice the Beautiful plays the part of Cupid...moments of terror as a vicious bully menaces the entire town...and many scenes of warm and affectionate family life in Mamma’s boarding house.

A poignant, humorous and exciting saga, illuminated by Mamma’s radiant generosity and tolerance, Mamma’s Boarding House is a worthy successor to the highly-praised Papa Married a Mormon.

About the author

John Dennis Fitzgerald (February 3, 1906 - May 21, 1988) was an American author.

Born in Price, Utah, the son of an Irish Catholic father and a Scandinavian Mormon mother, Fitzgerald left Utah in 1925, at the age of 18, and held a variety of jobs, including playing in a jazz band, working at a bank and working for a steel company.

He published his first novel, Papa Married a Mormon, in 1955. Its sequel, Mamma’s Boarding House, followed in 1958, as well as a selection of other novels for adults about late nineteenth and early twentieth century Utah. Fitzgerald also published many stories published in magazines and co-wrote two textbooks on creative writing. In the 1960s, he turned his attention to books for children, writing the highly successful The Great Brain series, in which his characters are loosely based on characters from his own family and community, including himself.

He passed away in 1988 at the age of 82.