Fragments: A Memoir

by Archie Satterfield

This is a memoir of growing up in a poor, dysfunctional family in Ozark County, Missouri, during the 1930s and 1940s. The author was the youngest in a large family that lived on a farm that was mostly rocks amid poor soil. It tells of his struggle with a mother who was areligious fanatic and certainly mentally disturbed, and a father who had been rendered silent by her rages. It tells how good things came from the abuse he suffered from her and his brother, and how he learned what family love is from living with his eldest brother during his sophomore year of high school. He learned independence and self-sufficiency from working on wheat farms and cattle ranches, where he was free from his family problems and the teachers who belittled and humiliated him for his dyslexia.

The memoir ends with him being suspended from high school in his senior year, and him joining the Navy, where he would earn a GED diploma and decide to go to university.

144 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 1, 2010

About the author

Archie Satterfield is the author of several books about Alaska and the Klondike.