The Way-Back Room: A Memoir of a Detroit Childhood (Working Lives Series) - Softcover

Mary Minock's The Way-Back Room will charm and appall you. What is it really like to be the daughter of an undiagnosed hoarder in post-war Detroit? As these captivating characters bungle forward through everything from fifties-style Catholicism to selling Avon, you will want to pack them up and save them in your own way back hearts. But as a mother's hoarding absurdly fills the way back rooms of her house, her daughter must finally grapple with the emptiness of a fatherless home in an era where gossip exploits shame and silence stockpiles loss. Minock's graceful prose, clear-eyed description, and masterful development unpack the story of a daughter who must learn to sort the material from the immaterial, the meaningless from meaningful. The Way- Back Room is a beautiful and truly rewarding coming-of-age memoir. Anne-Marie Oomen is author of Pulling Down the Barn

Mary Minock's memoir, The Way-Back Room, brings to life the sounds and smells--and the grit--of one fragmented family's home life in Detroit in the 50s and early 60s. Full or rich detail and texture, it offers keen insights into the subtle and unsubtle tensions in the life of a young woman coming of age

in this era of change, trying to forge her own path to a clear view of her family history. Minock's sharp, vivid prose, and clear-eyed reflections on the past keep us with her all the way, cheering her on.

Jim Daniels

What a treasure Mary Minock has given us in The Way-Back Room. This memoir does what good memoir is meant to do—provide unexpected insights into the humanity we all share in a way that sometimes shames us, sometimes makes us laugh, sometimes hurts, sometimes makes us angry, and all too often breaks our heart - and she it does it beautifully. Young Mary Rhodes survives the death of her father, the neuroses of her mother, the cold shoulders of her classmates, the cruelty of the nuns at her Catholic school, an obsession with the martyred saints, and a crush on Elvis, sticking it out with bewildered determination, but determination nonetheless. And what a joy to see this portrait of a Detroit neighborhood in the 1950s, which Minock paints with such obvious love for the city. A rich and rewarding pleasure from start to finish. ~George Dila,