A memoir of a girlโs chaotic childhood as she attends twelve schools in eleven years and is forced by her motherโs instability to care for her siblings.
โI left your dad,โ Mama told me more than once, โbecause I didnโt want to kill him.โ
She wasnโt kidding.
Mama said she stood at the kitchen counter, her hand touching the smooth wooden handle of a butcher knife. In an argument that grew more heated, Mama felt her fist close around the handle. For a brief moment, she deliberated between slashing our father with the knife or releasing it harmlessly back onto the counter and walking away.
My sister Vicki was ten months old; I was two. Mama was seventeen.
Terryโs stepfather Davy, a good-hearted, loving man, proudly purchased a mobile home so his family could move more easily from one town to another as he eked out a living in the oil fields.
Terryโs mother, Carola Jean, a wild rose whose love often pierced those who tried to claim her, had little interest in the confines of home and motherhood. Sheโd already walked out on Terryโs father, and in her new husband Davyโs work-related absences, she sought companionship in local bars. She repeatedly left Terry in charge of the household and her five younger sisters.
Despite Carola Jeanโs genuine attempts to โbetter herself,โ her life spiraled ever downward as Terry struggled to keep the family whole. Amid transience, upheaval, and their motherโs alcoholism and deteriorating mental state, Terry and her sisters forged an uncommon bond that withstood the long, bumpy erosion of Davy and Carola Jeanโs marriage. But ultimately, to keep her own dreams alive, Terry had to decide when to hold on to what she loved and when to let go. Unflinching in its portrayal yet rich with humor and compassion, this memoir reminds us that even if others abandon you, you must never abandon yourself.
โInteresting and eye-opening . . . no matter what these girls were exposed to, they conquered any obstacle.โ โChicago Tribune
โHelwig nimbly conveys her confusion . . . the authorโs depiction of her life and her motherโs downward spiral toward parental fatigue is frank.โ โKirkus Reviews
โThe world needs Moonlight on Linoleum because. . . . it is what redemption looks like.โ โSue Monk Kidd, from the foreword