A Child of Air

Three generations. One suburban street. A Child of Air is a detailed portrait of a particular place and time — a single block in Teaneck, New Jersey in the 1950’s and early 1960’s. It’s a memoir-in-pieces, built of scenes and stories. The author interweaves personal memories of her street’s residents and their dramas with elements of local history and reflections on the vagaries of memory itself — how memories carry the past into the present, and why some events and personalities remain vivid while others blur.A Child of Air will resonate with anyone who remembers skate keys, Flav-R-Straws, safety patrol, hats and white gloves in church, air raid drills, sledding on snowy streets, burning leaves in fall, or catching lightning bugs in summer twilight. And it will provoke all readers to recall and measure their own youthful joys and worries, their own back yard stories, the neighbors and experiences who shaped their unique childhoods. Read more