Star Reads - Some Bright Morning, I'll Fly Away

What do you do? Where do you go when waves crash in on your life?

I was provided a copy of Some Bright Morning I'll Fly Away for the purpose of this review.All opinions are mine. It is my Universe, after all.

These are the questions facing Alice Anderson in her starkly beautiful memoir, Some Bright Morning, I'll Fly Away. She is a mother of her sweet three, a lover of words, and the painful bearer of bruised eyes and a wounded soul. Questions of personal safety and safety of the heart swirl in the sand of Ocean Springs, MS.  It is heartbreaking and at times, equally bruising for the reader, but redemption comes in the sands of a different shore.

Sometimes Life Can Crash Harder than Katrina's Waves

Katrina crashed into her life in 2005 but even the rush of water and wind could not wash her life of problems. Dark shadows of a man of unspeakable rage plague more than dreams for Anderson and her children. Purple desert flowers of bruising may fade, but traumatic brain injury doesn't. Anderson's story is one of resilience but it is frank in its tragedy. Scars don't always show and even those that stay raised and pink may mean nothing in a courthouse determining a future. Bad things happen. Bad people thrive while good struggle. The reader works for the resolution but if you are willing to ride the waves of her troubled waters, it is worth it.

With this memoir, Anderson finds strength and vitality in her words. But she is not alone as she was not alone in any of this. Her three - Avery, Grayson, and Aidan - find their words and they are thrilling. As beautiful as Anderson's nearly lyrical prose is, nothing in the book is more profound than the clear determinative words her children speak in reclaiming there lives and it is then, "finally", that the author and reader share a collective exhale of the breath held for 270 pages.Ms. Anderson, your bright morning has come . Thank you for inviting me in.