Written in the last years before his death, this memoir by renowned Kentucky poet and photographer James Baker Hall goes in search of the mother he lost to suicide when he was eight years old. Working his way through a memory shattered by trauma, he tries to recover the story of his beloved mother Lurlene Bronaugh and the long consequences of her death for his childhood self and the man he becomes. In what Erik Reece calls “genuine, probing, and courageous” language, Hall seeks out a story that was shuttered in silence and shame. The book includes dozens of Hall’s photographic images from his series “Orphans in the Attic.” It features a foreword by Erik Reece and an introduction by Mary Ann Taylor-Hall.
