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Clips & Consequences: a memoir
BACK COVER TEXT: Sex, Drugs & Rock-n-Roll with a hefty twist --
a ride on this mom's skateboard tops any rollercoaster
On the morning of May 17, 1995 Beth dropped off her 14-year-old daughter, Zoey, at school on the way to work. That afternoon Beth received a phone call from her daughter’s father, Eric, informing Beth he had taken Zoey out of school and checked her into an out-of-state lock-down drug rehabilitation facility. Eric added, “I’m not telling you where she is.” It is this day and the following 1,100 days until Zoey’s high school graduation and emancipation from her father—when Beth could legally be with Zoey again—that moves Beth to open the book of her life.
In this true crime memoir, to avoid prosecution and up to fifteen years in prison, Beth signs away her right to parent Zoey and to have any contact with her. You will read Beth’s journals and correspondence, including the letters she writes to Zoey and keeps on her closet shelf in bags marked with the year written. Beth muddles through a range of fear, shame, anger, and remorse, until she stumbles onto the path to recovery while immersing in Seattle’s Post-Grunge music scene and Poetry Slam, working with the skateboard industry, and reveling in her new-found sex goddess role. Ultimately she involves in a calling to regain her spirit.
"Clips & Consequences" is a fervently rollicking ride. Hang on to your hat.
a ride on this mom's skateboard tops any rollercoaster
On the morning of May 17, 1995 Beth dropped off her 14-year-old daughter, Zoey, at school on the way to work. That afternoon Beth received a phone call from her daughter’s father, Eric, informing Beth he had taken Zoey out of school and checked her into an out-of-state lock-down drug rehabilitation facility. Eric added, “I’m not telling you where she is.” It is this day and the following 1,100 days until Zoey’s high school graduation and emancipation from her father—when Beth could legally be with Zoey again—that moves Beth to open the book of her life.
In this true crime memoir, to avoid prosecution and up to fifteen years in prison, Beth signs away her right to parent Zoey and to have any contact with her. You will read Beth’s journals and correspondence, including the letters she writes to Zoey and keeps on her closet shelf in bags marked with the year written. Beth muddles through a range of fear, shame, anger, and remorse, until she stumbles onto the path to recovery while immersing in Seattle’s Post-Grunge music scene and Poetry Slam, working with the skateboard industry, and reveling in her new-found sex goddess role. Ultimately she involves in a calling to regain her spirit.
"Clips & Consequences" is a fervently rollicking ride. Hang on to your hat.
356 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2011
1 person is currently reading
53 people want to read
About the author
Beth Myrle Rice
1 book6 followersBeth founded Purple Stripe Publishing in January 1998 to produce both a tree-free chapbook of her poetry entitled Your Tree & Collected Poems for Personal Freedom and a free-to-the-Seattle-public newspaper called Hemp Activist Times. She began writing Clips & Consequences: a memoir in 1996 but her manuscript was repeatedly pushed to the back burner due to ever shifting life circumstances. Each time writing resumed a transformation occurred in the manuscript reflecting personal growth, healing, a shift of consciousness; invariably following a “Tst! What were you thinking, Beth?” The story brought to pages between covers in 2011 represents what Beth considers to be the right book.
Beth has been a member of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association since 2005. And, this year has joined Book Publisher NW.
In addition to reading and writing Beth loves to bake, particularly cookies and cinnamon rolls of the sticky yum gooey kind. She also loves to crochet: hats, scarves, afghans... She does not use patterns preferring to wing it; while knowing to get the best fit or best look often means ripping it out and doing it again to the tune of having crocheted the one item two or three times when done. She is a huge fan of music and dancing in many genres and styles.
Beth is trying to decide if it's awkward or just plain silly to write about herself in third person. Is this perhaps a common dilemma with all self-publishers?
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 20, 2011
Just finished Beth Rice's beautifully written memoir CLIPS & CONSEQUENCES. This is a 5-star read, impeccably paced. Rice's poetry - included in the book - is brilliant and thought provoking. She made me laugh but she also made me cry. It's a moving, heart 'wrenchingly' honest read - often painfully so. Incredibly poignant, CLIPS & CONSEQUENCES IS going to live with me, in my mind, in my heart, for a long while.
December 5, 2011
I loved this book. Beth shares her feelings, her thoughts, her soul. She caught me up in the heart ache of raising a teenage daughter under very stressful circumstances.
Beth's life is fast paced, full of sex and drugs, but very reflective. She keeps you interested in the choices she makes and how that plays out.
I recommend this book to anyone who has raised a child and is introspective.
Beth's life is fast paced, full of sex and drugs, but very reflective. She keeps you interested in the choices she makes and how that plays out.
I recommend this book to anyone who has raised a child and is introspective.
April 18, 2012
A rollicking crazy ride, heartfelt and crazy! Your heart will break over and over, but when you think you will just have to put this book down, Ms Rice gives you a big hearty gut-laugh. Fans of all things hemp will enjoy this book.
January 2, 2012
I received this book from goodreads.com for free. Wow. There were some difficult parts to read. Touching and well thought out.
April 26, 2012
I have given my memoir five stars but I won't be reviewing it. One of my readers gave it a 5 Star rating at Amazon on April 25, 2012:
Emotion, the main character of Fine Art
By patsanno
"Clips and Consequences" was a surprise. It is a belief of mine that the main ingredient of fine art is emotion as opposed to technique. Emotion comes in many forms, negative and positive and this book has it all. Reading Beth Myrle Rice's snippets of her life from the mid 1980s to 2000 is full of her struggles to manage and cope with the complexities of life in an arena foreign to most of us.
I urge the reader to read with an open mind as the walls we build for ourselves are not the same walls that she had. As a result, she was forced to live under the large thumbs of others.
Truly a free spirit, this writer/artist moves through life with love and purpose. This book is loaded with emotion, negative and positive, a good read.
And, http://www.selfpublishingreview.com reviewed it at length. The condensed version of that review, as it posted at Amazon on April 18, 2012, looks like this:
Impressive
By SPR
Clips & Consequences is in part what is known as a confessional memoir. In other words, the book focuses on Beth's interior journey as outer events unfold in her life. The thrust of Beth's story is a custody situation in which she is coerced into signing away parental rights under threat of going to jail. As the jacket copy states: Beth muddles through a range of fear, shame, anger, and remorse, until she stumbles onto the path to recovery while immersing in Seattle's Post-Grunge music scene and Poetry Slam, working with the skateboard industry, and reveling in her new-found sex goddess role. Ultimately she involves in a calling to regain her spirit.
The book as a whole is an organization of a wide variety of material from roughly 1995 through 1999, including journal entries, personal letters, original poetry, photographs, and photocopies of documents and pages from pertinent publications, in all more than 350 pages yielding what can only be described as stark emotional honesty.
Beth learns to live with the forced separation from her daughter while building her career as a sales rep, navigating the dating scene as a single woman for the first time in many years, and facing her personal flaws with honest self-criticism. "Sometimes I wonder if all people...review clips of consequence, analyzing...those frames that have strong impact," she writes in an unmailed letter to her daughter. Beth's questions of herself include her addiction to cigarettes, her personal use of alcohol, and her obsession with a local musician.
This memoir not only documents a personal journey, it also serves as social and political witness: Who gets to decide what a `good mother' is? Are mistakes `wrong'? "It is not a rarity for a good person to make a wrong choice," Beth writes. "Is twenty years in prison congruous with this act?" Through her journals and letters, Beth reconstitutes outer influences and inner motivations and by March of 1997 she realizes: "I am now changing my perception of this whole story."
Beth's writing has clarity and her ability to organize all of this material is impressive but more importantly, she achieves what I believe was her goal with this memoir, to not only document a healing journey, but in addition, show herself as fully human. In this last regard, whether or not a reader enjoys this memoir will depend on how willing one is to be exposed to another person's inside workings in minute detail, in writing. I give this book 4 stars.
Emotion, the main character of Fine Art
By patsanno
"Clips and Consequences" was a surprise. It is a belief of mine that the main ingredient of fine art is emotion as opposed to technique. Emotion comes in many forms, negative and positive and this book has it all. Reading Beth Myrle Rice's snippets of her life from the mid 1980s to 2000 is full of her struggles to manage and cope with the complexities of life in an arena foreign to most of us.
I urge the reader to read with an open mind as the walls we build for ourselves are not the same walls that she had. As a result, she was forced to live under the large thumbs of others.
Truly a free spirit, this writer/artist moves through life with love and purpose. This book is loaded with emotion, negative and positive, a good read.
And, http://www.selfpublishingreview.com reviewed it at length. The condensed version of that review, as it posted at Amazon on April 18, 2012, looks like this:
Impressive
By SPR
Clips & Consequences is in part what is known as a confessional memoir. In other words, the book focuses on Beth's interior journey as outer events unfold in her life. The thrust of Beth's story is a custody situation in which she is coerced into signing away parental rights under threat of going to jail. As the jacket copy states: Beth muddles through a range of fear, shame, anger, and remorse, until she stumbles onto the path to recovery while immersing in Seattle's Post-Grunge music scene and Poetry Slam, working with the skateboard industry, and reveling in her new-found sex goddess role. Ultimately she involves in a calling to regain her spirit.
The book as a whole is an organization of a wide variety of material from roughly 1995 through 1999, including journal entries, personal letters, original poetry, photographs, and photocopies of documents and pages from pertinent publications, in all more than 350 pages yielding what can only be described as stark emotional honesty.
Beth learns to live with the forced separation from her daughter while building her career as a sales rep, navigating the dating scene as a single woman for the first time in many years, and facing her personal flaws with honest self-criticism. "Sometimes I wonder if all people...review clips of consequence, analyzing...those frames that have strong impact," she writes in an unmailed letter to her daughter. Beth's questions of herself include her addiction to cigarettes, her personal use of alcohol, and her obsession with a local musician.
This memoir not only documents a personal journey, it also serves as social and political witness: Who gets to decide what a `good mother' is? Are mistakes `wrong'? "It is not a rarity for a good person to make a wrong choice," Beth writes. "Is twenty years in prison congruous with this act?" Through her journals and letters, Beth reconstitutes outer influences and inner motivations and by March of 1997 she realizes: "I am now changing my perception of this whole story."
Beth's writing has clarity and her ability to organize all of this material is impressive but more importantly, she achieves what I believe was her goal with this memoir, to not only document a healing journey, but in addition, show herself as fully human. In this last regard, whether or not a reader enjoys this memoir will depend on how willing one is to be exposed to another person's inside workings in minute detail, in writing. I give this book 4 stars.
December 15, 2011
As much as I appreciate getting a *signed* copy of the book (Thanks, Beth!), I did not overly love the story itself. I just cannot agree with some of the life choices she has made and openly flaunts, and I feel pity for her daughter for having grown up the way she did. Beth is very honest in her writing, and for that, I commend her. However, I just cannot agree with her viewpoint on marijuana. Being a middle school teacher, I overhear things about drugs and alcohol that make me so sad. There was even a news story this evening that stated that 1 out of every 15 high school students smokes pot on a daily basis. That just depressed the heck out of me! You need a clear head and a clear mind to function well and be successful in this world, and I shudder to think what the world will come to if drug use continues to be rampant and gets worse.
Overall, an honest story, but too many things I cannot get over- specifically, the life she has forced her daughter to observe and sadly, re-create in her own life.
Overall, an honest story, but too many things I cannot get over- specifically, the life she has forced her daughter to observe and sadly, re-create in her own life.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 7, 2012
While Beth Rice’s page-turner of a memoir immediately entices with the book jacket’s come-on of “Sex, Drugs & Rock-n-Roll” (indeed, this freshman effort is peppered with all three), get ready for an even more manic journey: a life lesson in parenting. Given the circumstances - and without spoiling the content (which includes pictures, poetry and an interesting prose style in Ms. Rice's quirky voice) – I wanted to hug Beth and shake her hard at the same time. For some, this may be a cautionary tale; for others, this just may be the exhilarating joy ride they missed out on.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews