Grandma, You Did What? A Memoir

Carol J. Almson weaves her stories into an amazing tapestry. Readers will be enthralled as adventure followes adventure -- her friendships, her love affairs with women, her professional achievements, her travels, heart-break with her daughter, and finally, her retirement to a small town in the soul-enhancing red desert of southern Utah. In this remote area she builds a cabin which rfeflects the peace and self-understanding she has attained.

One remarkable aspect of this narrative is the way frightening and surprising adventures build character as Carol's innocence and naivete clash with unexpected and foreign events. Her earliest memory is when a Chicago UPS driver tried to kidnap her at the age of four. Later, in San Francisco her friends convince her that it is okay to take LSD. In Las Vegas she encounters a Mafia family. In Tia Juana she applaudes prostitutes while her frightened brother tries to "protect" her. In Costa Rica she slogs up a muddy trail in a cloud forest to reach the summit of Irazu Volcano. At Auschwitz and Birkenau she experiences revulsion in front of the crematorium's ovens, yet lovingly caresses some ashes she found in the shadows. In Jerusalem while touring along the Via Dolorosa, Arabs rob her.

The reader of this memoir will assuredly experience tears and laughter and in the end inspiration.