**A funny, touching memoir of coming of age with an absent mother in a vanished time, with five added companion stories ** The setting is Vancouver Island, the year 1960. It is the era of The Three Stooges and the Red Menace, the apex of plastic, Arborite, and everything turquoise: high heels, pedal pushers, refrigerators, even cars. Throughout her childhood, Marion Farrant heard wild family stories of the sophisticated life...