Butterflies or Tigers: a Memoir

Like the author herself, these improbable stories
defy classification. Culled from ninety-one years
of a rich and varied life, they begin with a vivid
childhood memory of a terrifying hurricane at sea,
during her family's journey from Colombia to a
new life in the U.S. What follows is a series of
disparate tales that include:
• Learning to cope with a free fall from suburban
comfort in New Jersey to Great Depression rural
poverty in alligator-infested central Florida.
• Having a mystical encounter in a sacred forest in
Assisi, Italy.
• Being exposed to the subtleties of Earl Gray's tea,
Viennese "shtroodel," and "Bead a Meyer" furniture
by a sophisticated Hungarian neighbor.
• Causing a sudden mysterious drop in the birthrate
in a Mexican fi shing village.
• Being rescued by a French taxi driver from taking
a room in a Marseille port hotel popular with sailors
and their ladies of the night.
• Enduring a hilarious seniors-only white-water rafting
trip on the Rogue River in Oregon.
• Finding herself stark naked in a rehabilitation
center shower with a rapt audience of two
attendants and a TV repair man.
Through these and other experiences and
adventures spanning ninety-one years, Liza Tilson
opens her heart, shares the good and the bad,
the funny and sad, and shows what it means to
embrace life and live it fully.