Escape Points

July 1, 2015
A single mother of three juggles multiple roles as a wrestling mom and a survivor of cancer and an abusive marriage. Northwestern University academic and veteran journalist Weldon (Everyman News: The Changing American Front Page, 2007, etc.) chronicles the challenging 25-year span after her divorce from her physically and emotionally abusive husband, who abandoned the family for a "better life for himself" in Amsterdam. The author writes of her husband's torturous behavior with palpable notes of regret, anger, and shame; he began hitting her just four months after their wedding. In 1995, nine years later, Weldon obtained an order of protection, which thrust her husband out of the family home and spurred acrimonious divorce proceedings that granted her sole custody of three boys, then ages 6, 4, and 1. "I knew I could not make up for the father who left my sons," writes the author, yet it was obvious even then that she would have to morph into supermom. With affable, heartfelt text, Weldon shares the intimate details of her trial-and-error parenting of three competitive wrestlers, each in varying stages of resentment over their father's heartless disinterest in them. Compounding this difficult situation was a breast cancer diagnosis and court appearances in which the author sought thousands in back child support. Thankfully, the boys' wrestling coach assisted her with the finer finessing of their sporting lives. While Weldon's reality as a composed, collected warrior navigating the slings and arrows of single parenthood can sometimes materialize into overly defensive diatribes, it also defuses a groundswell of "political and polarizing" perceptions about working mothers. Her gracefully told memoir will surely embolden readers in similar situations to "maintain your dignity and your sanity, and raise children who contribute to the world while you do the same." Weldon pins life to the mat in this valiant, passionate, purposeful memoir.

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Starred review from September 1, 2015
Journalist and single mother Weldon is the Everyperson voice of parents everywhere who are raising children on their own, partnerless and working outside the home to put food on the table and keep cell phones charged, because with children, that phone call may come at any time, day or night. It's the one that may be caller ID'd as Unknown where a semi-stranger says your son/daughter has had an accident, and we need you to meet us at the hospital as soon as possible. And you are the only one, the sole adult who must now drop everything and, above all, remain calm. When there is no one else to tell, You take this one, honey. I'll be there soon as I can, it's a mighty heavy yoke. But for anyone who has been through a contentious divorce, or breast cancer, or child support battles, or kids' wrestling matches and cauliflower ears or anything similar, Weldon's voice will ring of truth and wisdom and hurt and, yes, the beauty of it all. For she has done it, too, and lived to tell about it in the plain-speak of a parent who's seen too much to play games or sugarcoat anything, but who, nonetheless, can still laugh.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)