From Our House: A Memoir

If you enjoy regional writing and memoirs you will love this book. Martin's writing style is personal and intense but not overdone. Couldn't put it down!

A must read! Lee Martin takes a deeply honest look into who is, where he has come from and how that will shape his identity. Never have I come away from a piece of literature and felt so moved. Martin's memoir has a sort of constant rhythm that propels you to take the journey with him into another time. He avoids with great dignity the "poor me" syndrome, and takes the time to reflect with honesty and integrity the struggles of life. While 1960s life on a farm in the midwest might seem a nostalgic and peaceful setting, Martin brings to life the kind of violence and true grit of living and emotion that takes place in this typically idealized setting. A pleasure to read in that you come away feeling that you've learned as much as about your own life as you have the author's.

I could not put this memoir down. Lee Martin describes the difficulty of growing up in a 1960s household with a father, who displaces his anger and frustration on his young son after losing both hands in a corn-picker, and a mother who allows it to happen. Yet Lee's own anger about his parents softens and melts away after faith, hope, religion, aging, time and distance do it's work. Amazing that these three people managed to put some closure to their past difficulties without benefit of modern therapy. Do read it.

Do you have fond memories of the summers of your youth? Lee Martin does. Do you remember the sometimes silly, fun times with family and friends during your youth? Lee Martin does. Do you remember the onset of rebellion and its attendant problems? Lee Martin does. Do you remember your father beating you repeatedly with a belt and inflicting both physical and mental abuse? Lee Martin does. Have you gone to the extraordinary step of describing your most private family secrets to the world? Lee Martin does. This memoir is an elegant story about growing up on a small farm in southern Illinois with a submissive, meek schoolteacher mother and a violent, abusive father that lost both hands in a farming accident. The accident left his father a frustrated, bitter, violent man that robbed Martin of the compassion and love he desperately needed. This story of the struggle between a father and his adolescent son is at times painful, complex, affectionate, violent and heartbreaking. But it is also a wonderful story of redemption, love, inspiration and forgiveness that make it special among the seemingly hundreds of memoirs being published today. Martin has written a very personal story in a clear, compassionate way that will leave the reader thinking about this book for a long time. It is not a sentimental book. It is a compassionate, powerful book about the conflicts between a father and his son and the ultimate resolution of their rivalries.It is safe to say that virtually all children have experienced hardships while growing up. Some more so than others. The difference is that Martin has written his experiences down for the entire world to see. It is not always a pretty sight but his ultimate resolution is a story the entire world needs to hear. It should be noted that while this memoir is about the complex relationship between a father and son there is an underlying theme of the contributions made by his mother that ultimately allowed Martin to find peace and tranquillity in his life. His descriptions of the strenght and resolve of his mother are touching and unforgettable. While reading this book I was reminded of a book of poetry titled "There Are Men Too Gentle To Live Among Wolves." I suspect Lee Martin may be such a man. I wish I could have resolved my differences with my father, as did Martin. He is a special writer and person. When you look back on trying times in your childhood can you say,"In my memory, it was always summer?" Lee Martin does.

Lee Martin's memoir "From Our House" is more than an unsettling portrayal of a unique American childhood or the clash of generational values that were the seeds of the Sixties. It aims beyond a painful depiction of how rebellion and cruelty, even betrayal, can be bound up and contained within the love of a family. In fact, at its most daring, it is a suggestion of the very nature of forgiveness: that even as an offense and heartbreak continues, the indictment is never made and final judgement, despite so much bitterness, never rendered. It suggests something about the human spirit very hard to believe and by the end of the book, impossible to deny.Martin uses a strong grace to tell us of the accident that takes his father's hands on the farm. "I'm free to imagine that day anyway I'd like: a brilliant sun glinting off the picker, the dry leaves of the cornstalks scraping together in the wind; or perhaps it was overcast, the sky dark with the threat of rain, and perhaps the wind was cold on my father's face." It happens when Martin is a baby, this event that will shake his family so powerfully, releasing his father's terrible anger and shame, and his own struggle to understand, gain approval and finally forgive. Later in the book he imagines being present at the accident, older in this dream, and able to warn his father to turn off the tractor before manipulating the picker. He dreams of the power to prevent the accident that leaves the elder Martin with steel hooks to drive his car, hold a cup of coffee or touch his wife and son. Remarkably, at the conclusion, we're not sure Martin would want to change the past, or that we would have him do so."From Our House" hangs in the heart and mind's eye, this image of what we can be, drawn with the sharp lines of what we are. I read the book a second time because it is good news and true, true because it never cowers at our inhumanity.Martin's father and he share a rare moment of understanding on the morning of his grandmother's funeral. Coaxing his reluctant boy into preparing for the morning, his father lays beside him on the bed. "Such a strange day," he says. "You'd hardly think it was meant for you." The same can be said of this book, a stunning and beautiful declaration of everything we are.