On Sunset

Rebecca Lowman beautifully blurs the line between author and narrator in her performance of this memoir of an unconventional childhood in 1960s Los Angeles. Writer Kathryn Harrison was raised by her eccentric grandparents, and this loving tribute is largely a collection of stories of their lives before they immigrated to America, where they met. Lowman infuses her delivery with the wonder and delight the author clearly felt when she first heard about these long-ago adventures such as her grandmother's eight-day train trips from the Orient to Paris and her grandfather's fur-trapping scheme in the wilds of Alaska. Lowman's voice is more somber, however, when describing the family's dwindling finances and the author's rocky relationship with her often-absent mother. The print edition of this moving memoir includes family photographs. C.B.L. � AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine