Linda Joy Myers - Song of the Plains: A Memoir of Family, Secrets, and Silence

Linda Joy Myers has written a remarkable, heartbreaking, and hopeful story. Song of the Plains is a memoir of fierce longing and a quest to understand the fragile bonds of family. Myers stitches together her past, finding solace in the landscape of the Great Plains and weaving in elements of story like a poet, detective, artist, therapist, mother, daughter, and historian. The fascinating and fractured women in this memoir will continue to whisper their songs for generations to come.

MELISSA CISTARO, author of Pieces of My Mother

Linda Joy Myers, already an established thought leader in the memoir genre, solidifies her legacy with this meditation on ancestry, place, generational pain, healing, and redemption. The authors consistently braided themes of memoir as art, craft, and psychological process are enhanced by her longstanding career as a marriage and family therapist. The writing is cohesive and evocative, the research impeccable, and the ultimate triumph over both nature and nurture compelling.

KATHLEEN ADAMS LPC, Director, Center for Journal Therapy, Inc., author of Journal to the Self, and editor of Expressive Writing: Foundations of Practice

Song of the Plains is a poetic work of art that deftly weaves an intergenerational tapestry of the authors ultimate healing and self-redemption. Threads of a child longing for love and the need for a maternal bridge that children need to thrive are woven throughout. Linda Joy Myers elegantly crafted memoir gives hope to readers yearning to break the legacy of childhood trauma and it inspires us to undertake necessary work to accept ourselves, own our worthiness, and take our rightful place in the world.

DONNA STONEHAM, PHD, author of The Thrivers Edge: Seven Keys to Transform the Way You Live, Love, and Lead

Linda Joy Myers is a warriora solider with a pen who fights her way through a painful family history to an unexpected place of profound understanding and gratitude. This beautiful memoir is for anyone who wants to cull deep meaning from their past and find peace and healing on the other side.

REV. SUSAN SPARKS, author of Laugh Your Way to Grace: Reclaiming the Spiritual Power of Humor

Linda Joy Myerss search for continuity in her family history brings to mind E. M. Forsters quote, Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted. Her search for connection deeply resonates in a time when social media makes connections that are broad but shallow. Rooted in place and personal stories, Song of the Plains is an antidote to the superficial and the faux. Myerss writing plumbs the depths of real experience. This important narrative is crafted to last.

SUE WILLIAM SILVERMAN, author of The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew

Intelligent, heartfelt, and tenderly observed, Song of the Plains is a memoir about identity, storytelling, and the healing power of telling the truth. Raised in a family haunted by secrets, Linda Joy Myers set out on a journey to discover what the women in her clan were hidingand whyas a way to untangle the legacy of inherited-but-hidden trauma. As Myers writes, If we hide or dont tell our stories, part of who we are goes missing. If youve ever puzzled over your own missing pieces or questioned who you might be without your own secrets, this beautiful book will help light your way.

MARK MATOUSEK, author of Sex Death Enlightenment and The Boy He Left Behind

Song of the Plains is an emotional and captivating read. From the very first page, Linda Myers leads the reader on a journey into the inner landscape of a complex family dynamic that invites curiosity and empathy. Myers is a brilliant storyteller, weaving together well-researched details with answers to plaguing life questions that reveal the reality of hometurning a preconceived definition on its head. This story touches readers in a way that stirs compassion for the complexity of people and their role in a larger framework known as family. It makes one wonder about their own sense of home and what theyve come to believe about it.

TINA M. GAMES, author of Journaling by the Moonlight: A Mothers Path to Self Discovery

The descriptions in Song of the Plains are downright elegiac. I felt I was standing on the red earth in Oklahoma, feeling the wind in my face. This next volume of Myerss quest for understanding and forgiveness of her foremothers and family will inspire anyone seeking to understand their roots.

SHARON LIPPINCOTT, author of The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing

We all have stories that change our lives. Sometimes we remain silent, but the silence only gives the story more power. In Song of the Plains, memoir expert Linda Joy Myers goes deeply into her own life story and reveals how she transformed it into a new one that helped her move forward with hope and love. Another moving healing journey related to family relationships from Myers, this book is a must-read for anyone who wants to exploreand healthe past.

NINA AMIR, best-selling author of Creative Visualization for Writers, The Author Training Manual, and How to Blog a Book

For years, as I considered the mystery of my childhood, I wondered, Who were these people who molded me? Song of the Plains asks that question and explores the decades-long saga of the authors search for answers. Like an ancestral detective, Myers peers into the evidence and follows historical bread crumbs, attempting to make sense of her familys earlier lives.

JERRY WAXLER, author of The Memoir Revolution

Beautiful and lyrical, this memoir is achingly honest. We see the narrator, a strong woman who not only survived her early lifeabandonment, rageful attacks, and betrayalsoffering us the story of her struggle and ultimate redemption. Through writing her story she shows us a way to find our own, modeling the kind of bravery and grit it takes for us to embark on our own journey.

JUDY REEVES, author of Wild Women, Wild Voices and A Writers Book of Days

Myers, a skillful and poetic storyteller, recalls scenes from a childhood spent in the long shadows of her mother and grandmother. We follow her sheros journey as she attempts to disentangle her spirit from the legacies of the past and finds the lost stories that are the key to freedom.

HOLLYE DEXTER, author of The Fire Season

Copyright 2017 by Linda Joy Myers

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2017
Printed in the United States of America
Print ISBN: 978-1-63152-216-1
E-ISBN: 978-1-63152-217-8
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017933977

For information, address:
She Writes Press
1563 Solano Ave #546
Berkeley, CA 94707

Cover design Julie Metz, Ltd./metzdesign.com
Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

For my children and grandchildren;
may you know the power of your own history.