In this exquisite memoir, St. Paul-based writer, Patricia Hampl, describes the lives and deaths of both her mother and her father, a prominent Czech-American florist, and in doing so, her own life as well. The family began in a poor immigrant neighborhood and moved uptown to do flowers for high-society balls and weddings. Documented here also, is the role of the adult daughter as caretaker: the hours in doctors' offices, the days spent trying to meet her mother's demands, the odd switch of being the driver in her father's big boat of a Buick. Hampl, who had been a rebellious 1960s daughter (demanding enough to refuse to go to the Catholic college her parents had picked for her) asks at one point, how did it happen that she stayed in her hometown while she had planned to see the world. This book shows why and how. For lovers of quality nonfiction.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
The Florist's Daughter
In this exquisite memoir, St. Paul-based writer, Patricia Hampl, describes the lives and deaths of both her mother and her father, a prominent Czech-American florist, and in doing so, her own life as well. The family began in a poor immigrant neighborhood and moved uptown to do flowers for high-society balls and weddings. Documented here also, is the role of the adult daughter as caretaker: the hours in doctors' offices, the days spent trying to meet her mother's demands, the odd switch of being the driver in her father's big boat of a Buick. Hampl, who had been a rebellious 1960s daughter (demanding enough to refuse to go to the Catholic college her parents had picked for her) asks at one point, how did it happen that she stayed in her hometown while she had planned to see the world. This book shows why and how. For lovers of quality nonfiction.
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