Description
From the Dust Jacket Fly Leaves
One day toward the end of this century, a woman born in the last met with her senior citizens’ group. Their new project: to write down stories about their lives. Eighty-year-old Jessie Lee Foveaux began reluctantly, then became enthusiastic. The manuscript she finally produced so impressed her writing instructor that he sent it to Clare Ansberry at the Wall Street Journal, who immediately devoted a feature to it. The record that Jessie Foveaux created at her kitchen table with the thought of sharing only with her family had been recognized as a rare and precious document, a preservation of the challenges and struggles that defined the American experience in the twentieth century—and the story of a little girl born in 1899…. Her childhood was idyllic: fishing by moonlight, dressing her cats in doll clothes, stealing apples from the orchards planted on the Western frontier. Slim, lively Jessie Lee dreamed a little girl’s dreams in an exquisitely remembered world of one-room school-houses, snowy Christmases, and a family that survived scarlet fever and floods with the power of love. But for Jessie Lee, as for the nation, World War I put an end to those years of innocence. She lost her beloved fiance and mother in one year. With the satin wedding gown she’d once hoped to wear lying untouched in a trunk, she eventually married a man she didn’t love and bore him eight children. Then, as her husband sank deeper and deeper into alcoholism, she carried the brunt of raising them on her own—selling products door-to-door with her youngest children by her side, and fighting debt and dishonor with hard work and the loving help of family and friends. By the end of the Depression she hated her husband enough to remove all photographs of him from her home. Yet as time went on, And Jessie Lee broke with convention to find a job and get a divorce, she also found it in her heart to forgive the husband who had disappointed her, take responsibility for her own mistakes, and pass the insights of a long lifetime down to her children and grandchildren. Her unadorned, powerful prose, sparked by her wry humor, belies her story: that of a child raised on simple and solid American values who experienced the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century. Many of the disappointments she faced will echo all too well in the hearts of younger women. Ultimately, however, her message is inspiring: that life is about meeting our challenges… and that extraordinary courage can be found inside ordinary lives, wisdom resides behind every elderly face, and everyday heroes and heroines stand beside us within our own American families.
Publishing Info
Any Given Day: The Life And Times Of Jessie Lee Brown Foveaux by and SIGNED by Jessie Lee Brown Foveaux. From the First Printing by Warner Books with 1997 copyright. The ISBN is 0-446-52343-7. This hardcover book measures 9-1/4″ x 6-1/4″ and has 287 pages.
Condition
See photos above. In very nice condition with lighter storage on the nice dust jacket, boards as new, and pages in near new condition. No ownership names or markings found. From clean, smoke-free home.
Shipping
Generally sent the same day payment arrives. Unless you request otherwise, I will wrap the book in plastic wrap to help protect it from the elements, create a custom-made cardboard box to ship it in, and send via Media Mail with Delivery Confirmation tracking. See the shipping page for the cost to send a two-pound Media Mail package. Insurance is an additional cost as described. I am delighted to combine postage and insurance costs if you purchase more than one item. The second item may travel for free or just a few cents more — so it’s worth taking a look at my other items before you complete your order.
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