A Jersey Girl's Guide to the Universe: A Memoir
Amy Farrar grew up in Grovers Mill, New Jersey, ground zero for an infamous radio broadcast in 1938 that scared the bejesus out of thousands of people who thought that Martians had landed in her podunk town. The broadcast, orchestrated by actor Orson Wells, was a reenactment of H.G. Wells's science fiction book, The War of the Worlds. Something about growing up in Grovers Mill set Amy up for a life filled with real paranormal experiences and otherworldly encounters, and it wasn't just her active imagination.
Farrar's life has been no ordinary existence. It includes an uncle who was (probably) a CIA operative, landing a plane by herself, and managing a weekly newspaper, where she covered everything from brutal political fights and field days at local schools to an entire apartment complex that went up in flames. More compelling, however, are the multiple experiences Farrar has had with unexplained phenomena that have included out of body experiences, ghosts, premonitions, synchronicities, and sightings of UFOs (to name a few), which is made all the more ironic given her early start in Grovers Mill.
But Amy's memoir, A Jersey Girl's Guide to the Universe, isn't just about the weird stuff that inserted itself into her life, it's about how she reinvented herself after growing up in an alcoholic home, finding herself in an abusive relationship, losing her father when she was in her early twenties, and moving more than 1,000 miles away to hit "reset" on her life. When Amy left Jersey in the late 1990s to live in Minnesota, she wasn't sure what would happen. She couldn't imagine fitting in culturally (you betcha!), living without a WaWa, or tolerating living on a frozen iceberg six months out of the year. The universe had its own plans for her, however, and it had nothing to do with the weather and everything to do with launching her own business, finding the love of her life, and becoming a mother-something she hadn't thought was in the cards for her.
Told through a historical lens spanning back to her Slovakian immigrant grandparents, Amy's story is a microcosm of social issues about family, addiction, and relationships, but it also shines a light on what it's like living with one foot on terra firma and another in some other dimension. She continues to experience the unexplained to this day.
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