book review: Heather Ross' childhood story

As a researcher, I read a lot of nonfiction. I am particularly drawn to biography and memoirs, but its tricky to find good ones. "How to Catch a Frog" by Heather Ross is one of the good ones.

This book was published back in 2014. I just heard about it after listening to an interview Heather gave on Abby Glassenberg's podcast. Some of you may know of Heather... she is a longtime fabric designer who has worked with Kokka, Free Spirit and now Windham. She's been around in quilting and sewing world as a blogger, author and maker for quite a few years. I was not that familiar with her or her fabric when I heard the podcast, but Abby made the book sound very interesting. She was right.

Lots of us have stories to tell, but few of us are willing to share those stories in a fully transparent way. Heather shares her childhood story of growing up poor and mostly unsupervised by a mother who fed them only rarely and cared little for their safety. Her recollections of being very young and running around outside in the Vermont countryside are not sad. Rather she fills us with all the wonder of the outside world from the eyes of a child and leaves the reader to fill in the gaps of the absentee adults.

She shares the truth about herself, her twin sister, her mother and family, their ramshackle living arrangements, and so much more. These experieces are ones that most of us would be afraid to put down on paper for the whole world to see.

Most of all, this book is beautifully written. As a writer myself, I often want to take my highlighter to sentences that I admire, except I don't want to ruin my books! In this case, I would have totally ruined it because there are just too many beautifully written passages. One after another.

I purchased a used copy (hardback, in good condition) of "How to Catch a Frog" in from on online book seller. The cost was around $5. Great investment of five bucks and the time to read it!

 Here is the link to Abby's podcast.