Bitter Persimmons: An Unlikely Story

By A.S. Friedell

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594571058
• ISBN13: 9781594571053
• Release Date: February 2004
• Publisher: Dime Box Press
• Length: 232 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.0" x 0.8" x 5.3"

Customer Reviews

Texas Escapes Turned Me on to Bitter Persimmons

John Trosser, Editor or Texas Escapes, turned me on to A.s. Friedell's excellent memoir about her dramtic, first 32 years of her most interesting life. Trosser wrote about Biiter Persimmons: In Bitter Persimmons, first time author A.S. Friedell writes a personal story set in recent Texas history that somehow seems so long ago. The story opens on a depot platform in a small central Texas town where infant Alice is held in her grandfather's arms while her father's train pulls out, taking him off to war. He gives tiny Alice a shiny buffalo nickel to keep until he returns. Her description of an idyllic, albeit brief, childhood in rural cotton-producing Texas provides some of the most memorable scenes in the book. A very literal child, young Alice learns to mimic the words to the romantic post-war songs incessantly played on the radio. The mysterious, half-understood lyrics create unrealistic expectations of love and relationships. The loneliness of Lee County has (barely) teenage Alice imagining Elvis Presley driving into her front yard to ask for directions - and why not? Everyone else seems to do it. Her singing ability gets noticed and she starts winning local contests, ascending into regional stardom as Texas' possible answer to Brenda Lee. A disastrous audition at Houston's Shamrock Hotel and a move to Austin in the early '60s opens up a world that she never imagined from her hometown of Dime Box. Broken into three parts: The Girl, The Woman and The Mother, Bitter Persimmons is a story of expectations, disappointments, mistakes and growth. Alice marries five times with her fifth wedding celebrated just a week after her 32nd birthday. To say that her husbands were "assorted" would be accurate. One was the boy next door, one was Black, one was blind, and one just happened to forget to mention that he was already married. The backdrop is as wide as Texas - from Austin to Fort Worth to El Paso and even a slight spill over the border into Juarez, Mexico. Cameo appearances are provided by the smaller towns of Giddings, Rockport and Coleman. Sensationalism and hyperbole are refreshingly absent, so readers looking for a lurid contemporary "thriller" won't find it here. Bitter Persimmons is for readers who find truth stranger than fiction and real life more fascinating than fantasy. These are the ones who'll be swept up and carried away in Friedell's life story. The author's open, honest style pulls the reader in from the first page. Her characters are real as are the problems confronted, the conflicts resolved and the challenges accepted and won. Happy endings sometimes happen in real life and that's the case here. This is not giving anything away, since the story is the journey down a long, winding and often bumpy road.I went down the bumpy road of Bitte Persimmons and it gave me hope and inspiration to carry on.Bob Langfelder