An Afternoon in Waterloo Park (Great Lakes Books)

By Gerald Dumas

Book Overview

An Afternoon in Waterloo Park evokes feelings, sights, and textures of experience of a bygone period. Prompted by the emotional strain of his mother's death in 1968, Gerald Dumas contemplates three generations of his family and lyrically records impressions of life on Dickerson Avenue in Detroit. This is a complex family story, recollected from the surface of childhood and pondered from the depths of mature experience. Dumas' poetic form allows for closely packed images not possible in prose. What Our Town did in its attempt to find a value for the smallest events of everyday life in early twentieth-century New England, An Afternoon in Waterloo Park achieves for midcentury mid-America-a real and honest evocation of going home.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0814320392
• ISBN13: 9780814320396
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Wayne State Univ Pr (T)
• Length: 138 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.2" x 0.5" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Mr. Dumas says in words, thoughts that we only think.

A wonderful little book of his past on the east side of Detroit during the 1940's. His muted love and affection for his mother and her family (originally from Germany but relocated in southern Ontario) brings back many poignant memories. Touches a nerve that is hard to translate into words but Mr. Dumas has done a wonderful job exploring his inner soul and the one's around him. Just a great "little" book of thoughts and poetry, emotion and strength of character, love and remorse-all the things that we all have felt in our lifetime.