Jennifer Lauck - Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found

Featuring a WSP Readers Club Guide

A beautifully written memoirutterly absorbing, alternately heartbreaking and inspiring.

Hope Edelman, author of Motherless Daughters

THE NATIONALLY ACCLAIMED BEST SELLER

To young Jenny, the house on Mary Street was homethe place where she was loved, a blue-sky world of Barbies, Bewitched , and the Beatles. Even her mothers pain from her mysterious illness could be patted away with powder and a kiss on the cheek. But when everything that Jenny had come to rely on begins to crumble, an odyssey of loss, loneliness, and a childs will to survive takes flight.

Heart-wrenching, vividly remembered, and shockingly real.

The Denver Post

A phenomenal debut.

Daily News (New York)

A novelistic vision of a life with both hope and heartache to spare.

Harpers Bazaar

A standout.

Newsweek

JENNIFER LAUCK lives with her husband and son in Portland, Oregon, where she is a full-time writer. Still Waters, her sequel to Blackbird, is coming soon in hardcover from Pocket Books.

Register online at www.simonandschuster.com for more information on this and other great books.

CRITICS AND AUTHORS EMBRACE JENNIFER LAUCKS EXTRAORDINARY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Blackbird

This is one of those rare books that captures both the innocence of the child narrator and the wisdom of the adult author. BLACKBIRD is both a tribute to the authors mother and to her own powers of survival. I was so caught up in Jennifers story I couldnt turn the pages fast enough, yet I didnt want this book to end.

Hope Edelman

A searing, soaring memoir of one girls complicated and almost unbelievable childhood. Laucks literary achievementsare as extraordinary as those of Frank McCourt and Dave Eggers.

Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Gives hope to those who have weathered the loss of a parent, particularly a mom.

People

Riveting. [Lauck] succeed[s] brilliantly in portraying the innocence and intuition of a child, the vulnerability and strength, and the moral clarity and will to survive A brutal coming-of-age document[ed] with remarkable lucidity and forgiveness.

Booklist (starred review)

Lauck is ruthless in her investigation of a broken heart.

Tom Spanbauer, author of The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon

BLACKBIRD reads like a modern Grimms fairy tale. Lauck is a fine storyteller[who] has accomplished something remarkable: she has taken the remnants of a nasty and heartbreaking girlhood and arranged them in a literary mosaic that is as stirring as it is therapeutic.

Chelsea Cain (author of Dharma Girl ) in The Oregonian

The writing is vivid and beautiful. The story is poignant and remarkable. This riveting, unforgettable book deserves many, many readers.

The Denver Post

This heartbreaking memoirremains true to the childs eye and keeps the reader sympathetic and engaged.

Publishers Weekly

Riveting. Jennifer Lauck dissects childhood helplessness, lays it bare. Her improbable triumph is everywhere in this remarkable book.

The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

Direct, evocative, and emotionally honest, BLACKBIRD will haunt readers with its startling story and its vibrant narration.

Diana Abu-Jaber, author of Arabian Jazz

BLACKBIRD is Laucks stunning testament to the inborn ability children have to survive. By the books bittersweet final pages, youre on your feet cheering for her.

Gregg Kleiner, author of Where River Turns to Sky

Laucks beautifully rendered memoir about the dismantling of her young life[is] powerful and engaging. Perhaps Laucks greatest talent is her ability to articulate the boundless alienation and loneliness that Jenny lives with.

Newsday (New York)

A gripping memoir. Laucks account of courage in the face of cruelty gives new meaning to the word survival.

Glamour

A tender and delicately rendered tale of a young girls survival.

Laura Cunningham, author of A Place in the Country

An affecting, well-rendered memoir.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Jennifer Lauck shares a different order of memory, expressed with heartrending immediacy and transparency.

Marion Winik, author of First Comes Love and Telling

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A Washington Square Press Publication of

POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

www.SimonandSchuster.com

Copyright 2000 by Jennifer Lauck

Originally published in hardcover in 2000 by Pocket Books

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN: 0-671-04256-4

First Washington Square Press trade paperback printing September 2001

WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Cover design by Brigid Pearson; front cover by David Sacks/FPG International

ISBN 13: 978-1-4516-4430-2 (eBook)

For Janet Lee Ferrel Lauck and Joseph Edward Lauck

Blackbird singing in the dead of night

Take these broken wings and learn to fly

from Blackbird, The Beatles (1968)

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A ll thanks begin and end with my husband and best friend, Steve, who said he knew I could tell this story and that he would provide the funds and space and support for as long as I needed.

From this circle, I found my teachers: Hannelore Hahn and all the lovely writers of the International Womens Writing Guild; Suzan Hall and the writers who meet at her table; Diana Abu Jaber and PSUs writing program; Tom Spanbauer and his Dangerous Writers; and, of course, Remedial Readers and you too, Howard Waskow.

Then I was blessed with three graces. Kimberly Kanner at Pocket Books, who proved time and time again that there is truly good in a cynical world. Rita Rosenkranz, who stepped in with wise and tempered advice and then, in the final hour, a third gift from the gods, Molly Friedrich, whose vision of the future surpassed my own. Thank you Kim, Rita, and Molly.

The circle closes with final thanks to the one person who has really made the telling of this story possible: my son, Spencer. Thank you, Spencer, for leading me back to the joy of unconditional love; I thought Id never know it again.