Space: A Memoir

by Jesse Lee Kercheval

Overview

Jesse Lee Kercheval opens her story in Cocoa, Florida, in 1966 as a precocious ten-year-old whose family—father, mother, two little girls—is trying to ride the Space Race’s tide of optimism. But even as the rockets keep going up, the Kercheval family slowly spirals down.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780299300234
Publisher:	University of Wisconsin Press
Publication date:	07/21/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	830 KB

About the Author

Jesse Lee Kercheval was born in France and raised in Florida. She is the author of thirteen books of poetry, fiction, and memoir including the novels The Museum of Happiness and My Life as a Silent Movie and the writing text Building Fiction. The Sally Mead Hands Professor of English, she teaches creative writing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Table of Contents

Prologue: Madison, Wisconsin, 1993 Chapter 1. May 1966 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4. June 1966 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7. January 1967 Chapter 8 Chapter 9. April 1967 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12. October 1968 Chapter 13 Chapter 14. July 1969 Chapter 15 Chapter 16. October 1970 Chapter 17. December 1972 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20. January 1974 Chapter 21 Epilogue

Editorial Reviews

Kercheval was an obsessive fan of the U.S. space program. Her sweet and gentle memoir will evoke tremors of nostalgia.

Miami Herald

A story of the `60s and `70s as seen through the eyes of a bright and introspective girl. As the book begins, the 40-year-old author describes the family photos she has just received from her sister. From here, she takes readers back to her childhood and to her family's move to the Cape Canaveral area of Florida in 1966. The space program was in full gear and Jesse was caught up in the excitement. The space race, Vietnam, poverty, women's rights, the drug culture, Cuban refugees, civil rights, and divorce all touched Jesse's life, and she skillfully handles her evolving perceptions. At 10, she was a keen observer but did not always understand the whys of a situation. At 16, she understood her family's difficulties all too well. Her mother's sacrifices for her husband, including having to give up a job she loved because of the move, caused disappointment to turn into depression and her doctor prescribed valium just as the young people in the neighborhood began to dabble in and deal illegal drugs. Jesse's sister tried to hold the family together. It could not be done; but all was not lost. Life limped on. Kercheval's narrative style artfully takes readers through the years with Jesse, enabling them to view situations as she did as she matured. Space is a family's coming-of-age story. -- Nancy Karst, Fairfax County Public Library, Virginia

School Library Journal

Growing up on Florida's Space Coast in the late '60s and early '70s wasn't all fun and games....Kercheval's engaging narrative...tells it as it was...with warmth and humor.

Chicago Tribune

A sweetly honest memoir of a girl growing up amid the glare of the rocket launches from Cape Canaveral. . . . [A] coming-of-age story, but punctuated by the romance and thunder of rockets entering space.”—Kirkus Reviews



“An incandescent girlhood memoir. . . . So lyrical and poignant are the events it chronicles, it is hard to believe that it wasn't all by design.”—Booklist (starred review)



“A devastatingly honest, relentlessly unsentimental portrait of [the author’s] childhood. . . . A quietly powerful personal history.”—Jacqueline Boone, New York Times Book Review



“A story of the 1960s and 1970s as seen through the eyes of a bright and introspective girl.”—School Library Journal

From the Publisher