“Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.”
― William Shakespeare, Macbeth

“In 1948, eleven-year-old Audrey  lives with her father, mother, and three younger sisters in Jewell Valley, a coal mining camp in Southwest Virginia, where her mother still mourns the death of a baby, her father goes on drinking binges on paydays, and Audrey tries to recover from the scarlet fever that has left her skinny and needing to wear glasses.” – CIP. 

“In this book I have written about a time of great trauma in my family. I have used the voice of my oldest sister, Audrey, who was eleven at the time, to tell the story in her own words as she might have done then….My sisters Yvonne and Eleanor helped me with the details of the story. We are the only ones now who remember how it was for us….” (from the preface)

“‘…I want you to remember your daddy. There’s no need to dwell on his bad habits,’ she went on. ‘Just remember the good things about him, the good times we all had together'” (140).

“Don’t be ashamed to weep; ’tis right to grieve. Tears are only water, and flowers, trees, and fruit cannot grow without water. But there must be sunlight also. A wounded heart will heal in time, and when it does, the memory and love of our lost ones is sealed inside to comfort us.” – Brian Jacques, Taggerung

More stories of poverty: HERE

More stories based on memories: HERE

“We seem to live in a world where forgetting and oblivion are an industry in themselves and very, very few people are remotely interested or aware of their own recent history, much less their neighbors’. I tend to think we are what we remember, what we know. The less we remember, the less we know about ourselves, the less we are.” – Carlos Ruiz Zafón, author of The Midnight Palace