My mother’s name was Emily Berrigan and she was a writer of fiction who aspired to be a best-selling author. She spent most of her days up at her desk in my parents’ bedroom, drinking black coffee, smoking Kents and typing with a physical ferocity that rocked her Smith-Corona, something she kept impatiently correcting by squaring the machine in front of her. She was from California—San Diego—and brought with her to our quiet Detroit neighborhood her considered opinion that the world was a much larger and more sophisticated place than that imagined by those who lived around us. She was in her middle 30s, at the time I’m writing about, black-haired and small-boned, beautiful in a dark, honest, intense way, one of those people whose personalities seem apparent in the carving of their face.
The Wet Hen Society – Novel Excerpt
