When readers pick up memoirs, they sometimes wonder if they will be able to find a way to join in the story. Commonalities are vital if reading a memoir is to be something more than acting as a voyeur in someone else’s life.
Things in Common
Granted, some writers don’t seem too concerned if readers find anything in common with their stories – their lives are so exclusive that few readers would identify with much in those lives. This is not the case, however, with Free Wind Home – A Childhood Memoir 1935-1948 by Gary. L. Saunders (Breakwater Books, 2007). Although evocative of a particular time and place, the commonalities are evident in this book: love of family, creativity in childhood, a longing for a time so quickly passed.
A Creative Childhood Remembered
In his prologue, Saunders writes that his childhood “was an improbable mix of antique and modern, outdoor and indoor, freedom and constraint. At six I wanted to be a trapper, at seven a telegrapher, at eight a fighter pilot, at eleven Batman, at twelve an itinerant clergyman, at thirteen an artist.” He explains further that “It wasn’t that I was watching too much TV; we had none. I was simply mirroring, as children will, the goings-on around me.”
Dedicated to Mismatched Couple
Free Wind Home is dedicated to Saunder’s “mother’s father … who made barrels, and … her [mother’s] mother … who loved Shakespeare”. This, in itself, is a doorway through which to enter this book for who doesn’t have such a seemingly mismatched pair in their background? However mismatched they appeared, Saunder’s grandparents found common ground in their love for each other and for their children, and Saunders writes loving about them.
Walking in St. John’s, Newfoundland
When the author writes of walking in St. John’s at night, after a storm, his descriptions are so vivid that you feel you are walking along with him. And when Saunders writes about his family’s move from their rural home to the city, I understand his longing to go back ‘home’, to a place where his childhood memories are so clear.
Easy-going Writing Style
Saunders has an easy-going style of writing. You can picture him sitting in front of you and telling his story. This is one of the charms of Free Wind Home. Another is the black and white family photographs he’s included, which put faces to the people he writes about with such love.
In his short biography at the end of the book, Saunders confesses that he wrote this memoir “to find the words to a melody that has haunted me for years. Childhood, after all, is the original score for one’s life song.”
What reader would not find common ground in that confession? What writer would not find inspiration in it, as well?
