A family life uprooted by drinking

Born into a family where dad binged on booze life was chaotic.
Mom, an Ojibwa from Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewas, is the bedrock of the family, coping with beatings, struggling to survive, keeping hope alive for the large family of children while meting punishment with a back-hand.
Dad, a French Irish construction worker, uproots them from their Milwaukee home transplanting them onto a derelict farm in Big Falls, Minnesota where they live in the garage while he promises to rebuild the burnout house with each bar spent cheque.
Making bread with the meagre amount of flour, growing potatoes, and raising chickens the family food supply is minimal. Mom wears a greasy green dress, pinned together to make use of it. The kids fight over the charity-box clothes to make themselves acceptable for school.
This woman who fiercely defends her children and takes the beatings, passed in 1973 shortly after the author, Mark Anthony Rolo, returned from a summer camp sponsored by the welfare agency.
Her screams of pain stuck to his mind long after she left for the hospital in the old beat up car and throughout their cleaning of her blood from the house.
Rolo and two brothers were left in dad’s care while the youngest boy is fostered and the only sister asks to join him.
Life was difficult with Mom gone. The boys had chores, meals, and Rolo tried to care for his siblings even while he watched his dad’s steady alcohol induced decline.
Thirty-five years after her passing, Mark Anthony Rolo searches his childhood memories and others recall for just who his mother was.
His book, My Mother Is Now Earth, is told in a matter-of-fact way, with no bitterness and no animosity toward a father who blamed him for all that went wrong.
This book is a testimony of survival while it paints a picture of life in which alcohol creates poverty, fear, hunger, and abuse.
Rolo does a remarkable job of telling his story including his mother’s spirit visits shortly after her death to heal the family dog’s life-threatening injuries so that the kids will not have to deal with more pain and loss.
My Mother Is Now Earth -- Mark Anthony Rolo (Borealis Books, St Paul, MN; 2012; ISBN 978-0-87351-859-8 (paperback), ISBN 978-0-087351-859-8 e-book), 216 pages, $24.95)