The Plaid Robe

Funny and forlorn, insightful and inventive, The Plaid Robe, is a memoir of a Baltimore girl who transitions from bliss innocence to austere realism. The upheavals of the sixties merge with her journey from an innocent fifties childhood. Step back for a nostalgic jaunt to family vacations filled with frightful lightning storms and summer evenings spent playing red light, catching fireflies, and chasing bats. Laugh with the author remembering hairnets, stockings with seams, the first TV, streetcars, and shudder remembering air raid drills, gloomy hospitals, polio, and insensitive dentists. Experience first hand the Berlin Wall, the Baltimore race riots, Neil Armstrong's walk on the moon, Kennedy's assassination, and Vietnam's TV coverage. Come scrub marble steps, run from Black Aggie, cry for Rh-negative babies, laugh at circus clowns, marvel at the Great Blondin, and sail on the Chesapeake Bay to an anchorage at Gratitude. As the tale weaves into her adulthood, see her struggling with God, her marriage, and the complexity of the times.