Dimensions
127 x 198 x 19mm
This is Manette Ansay's long-awaited memoir, and what a story it is. For the first time she writes about her paralysing illness and how it shaped her life as a writer.
This is not just another writer's biography, it is a wonderful picture of rural midwestern life and an inspiring story of triumph over adversity.
Manette Ansay ("Ann") grew up in a small town not unlike the one she immortalised in Vinegar Hill. Her faith was the Catholicism of her family, and her passion was the piano, which she practised for hours each day. However by the time Ann is accepted into the prestigious Carnegie college for further musical studies, the pains in her arms and legs are becoming difficult to ignore, and eventually she must abandon the career she has chosen and the music she loves as life becomes an endless round of treatments.
As she rebuilds her life, she begins to write. She describes how difficult it was to find her own 'voice' as a writer, and the great liberation that came when she did.
One of the most remarkable things about this story is not simply the great courage the author has shown, or her lack of bitterness, but that all this happened before she was 30.
