Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found [Abridged, Audiobook] [Audio Cassette]

Jennifer Lauck (Author, Reader)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2000

With the startling emotional immediacy of a fractured family photo album, Jennifer Lauck's incandescent memoir is the story of an ordinary girl growing up at the turn of the 1970s and the truly extraordinary circumstances of a childhood lost. Wrenching and unforgettable, Blackbird will carry your heart away.

The house on Mary Street was home to Jennifer; her older brother B.J.; their hardworking father, who smelled like aftershave and read her Snow White; and their mother, who called her little daughter Sunshine and embraced Jackie Kennedy's sense of style. Through a child's eyes, the skies of Carson City were forever blue, and life was perfect -- a world of Barbies, Bewitched, and the Beatles.

Even her mother's pain from her mysterious illness could be patted away with hairspray, powder, and a kiss on the cheek...But soon, everything Jennifer has come to love and rely on begins to crumble, sending her on a roller coaster of loss and loneliness. In a world unhinged by tragedy, where beautiful mothers die and families are warped by more than they can bear, a young girl must transcend a landscape of pain and mistreatment to discover her richest resource: her own unshakable will to survive.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Jennifer Lauck conveys the perceptions, thoughts, and emotions of a frightened child with utter conviction and vivid immediacy in her remarkable memoir of the six years during which both of her parents died. Lauck opens in 1969, when she is 5 and her 31-year-old mother is entering the final phase of a decade of severe health problems. Momma is beautiful and loving; we feel the tender intimacy between mother and daughter, even as we see that Jennifer has assumed a lot of adult responsibilities that make her fearful and obsessed with rules. Eight-year-old brother Bryan responds to Momma's illnesses with anger, and is often cruel to his sister. High-powered, workaholic Daddy does his best, but is not around a lot. (The adult author subtly depicts the kids' half-conscious understanding that Daddy is seeing other women.) As Momma's health worsens and the family moves to Southern California to be near a better hospital, Lauck captures in painful detail the atmosphere of physical decay that surrounds a mortally ill woman. Momma dies on Bryan's 10th birthday. In short order, Daddy has moved them all in with Deb, who obviously has been his girlfriend for a while, and events spiral down from there. Daddy dies of a heart attack before Jennifer turns 10; Deb keeps the stepchildren (whom she dislikes) so that she can get their social security allotment; Jennifer is sent out to work at a residence that is run by Deb's creepy Freedom Community Church. She is 11 by the time that her aunt and uncle rescue her--a moment that is nearly as exultant for readers as it is for the girl whose trials they have shared for nearly 400 pages. Her harrowing story might sound unrelievedly grim in the retelling, but Lauck's lack of self-pity and the delicacy of her prose transform it into an odyssey of endurance and transcendence. --Wendy Smith --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Writing from the viewpoint of the child, rather than as an adult looking back with a mature perspective, Lauck's memoir recounts a childhood troubled by an unending string of upheavals and heartbreaks. Lauck's loving mother was chronically ill and absent for long periods of hospitalization. When she was home, she was frequently bedridden, and young Lauck, her brother and her father took turns attending to her catheter. After her mother's death, the father uprooted the family and, in an attempt to give his children a stable family, quickly remarried to an emotionally abusive woman with kids of her own. More losses followed, including the death of her father. Lauck's poignant narration matches the tone of the text: her youthful voice sounds innocent, bewildered and wounded as she tries to understand the devastations going on outside her control. At the same time, there's a core of defiance in her voice, a refusal to be beaten down by life's adversity. It's impossible not to be moved by the young girl's plight; it's equally impossible not to admire the adult's strength and courage in surviving it. Based on the Pocket hardcover (Forecasts, Sept. 25). (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Audio Cassette
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio; Abridged edition (October 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 074351811X
• ISBN-13: 978-0743518116
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (132 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,448,726 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #42 in Books > Books on Cassette > Biographies & Memoirs > Family & Children

More About the Author

This is me, Jennifer Lauck, and I have been a writer since I was seventeen years old. My Honor English teacher, at Mead Sr. High in Spokane, Washington discovered my gift. Karla Nuxoll told me to become a writer, "you are that good," she said.

I paid attention to Karla, enrolled in journalism classes in college and went on to become an investigative journalist in Montana, Washington and Oregon.

Finally, I stopped working in news in the 90's and began the investigation of a lifetime-one that took me into the very interior of my soul.

The results of that trek were the books Blackbird, Still Waters and Show Me the Way. My final memoir, Found, is now available here on Amazon!

Found: A Memoir with the remarkable and generous Seal Press, wraps up a fifteen year quest to knowing myself, which ends when I find the woman who gave me life but was forced to put me up for adoption. In finding my mother, I found what had been missing from my life--an identity! I am now writing a novel on dreams and producing essays on mothering, life, spirituality and wholeness.

I live in Oregon and am blessed with two children, Josephine and Spencer.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

88 of 89 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Absolutely could not put it down!, October 16, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found (Hardcover)

I was up until 4 a.m. finishing Jennifer Lauck's gripping story of her childhood. The pages seemed to turn themselves as I followed the early loss of her tenderhearted mother, her panicky father's remarriage, and her experiences at the hands of a neurotic stepmother. What makes this debut all the more impressive is Lauck's clear and compelling prose style. Early in the book, the childlike tone seems potentially grating, but the reader is quickly drawn under Lauck's spell as that voice rapidly hardens and matures in the face of a tough life. More important, there's an astonishing lack of self-pity that makes the story all the more chilling. This is not one of those horrifying stories of child abuse and molestation that, no matter how shocking, we like to think of as happening on the fringes of society. Instead, this is a straightforward recounting of life's circumstantial horrors, namely what happens to children when the people who are supposed to take care of them die and there's no one to take the adults' places. It seems too easy (and unfair) to compare her to Mary Karr, but Lauck displays the same surefootedness and narrative tautness that kept readers of "The Liars Club" enthralled. The only happy ending is her smiling author photo, and I don't know if I could have gone to sleep as dawn approached except that her acknowledgements thanked a husband and son for an unconditional love that she thought she'd never feel again.I'm thankful for Jennifer Lauck's happy adult life (and I feel the need after this glowing review to say that I don't know the woman at all), and I'm thankful as well for the talents that allowed her to turn an incredibly painful childhood into a gripping piece of literature.

43 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Had me standing and cheering for her at the end!, December 17, 2000

By 

Charlene Vasseur (Calgary, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found (Hardcover)

After seeing Jennifer Lauck on Oprah I began my search for this book. Once in hand, I read it in a period of 14 hours almost right through since I was unable to put it down, and unable to stop my tears. How desperately I wanted to take this poor child in my arms and hold her forever. It brought great comfort to remember her on Oprah...that she has survived, but even so I had to keep flipping to the back cover to see her smiling face to assure myself that her suffering is over now. I became so angry at society - I am sure there were many opportunities for adults to notice this child and her situation, but no one helped. This book reminded me of my own childhood pain, and helps me to perfect some of my parenting skills, and I truly hope that this book will serve the ultimate purpose and awaken us to the plight of children. Jennifer's story is heartbreaking, but she is not alone in a world that still largely minimizes children. Thank you dear sweet Jennifer for telling your story, and I truly hope that your words reverberate throughout the world as they allow insight into lonliness, grief, rejection and abandonment as seen through the eyes of a child. I tremendously look forward to the sequel.

42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very harrowing, very well written, October 10, 2000

By 

Laura Duet (Downers Grove, Illinois USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Blackbird: A Childhood Lost and Found (Hardcover)

I just finished this book 10 minutes ago...I read it very quickly because I had to find out what happened to Jennifer. This is a very well-written book. It is very harrowing and made me very mad that no adults came through to help Jennifer and her brother. I can only wonder how Jennifer made it through to where she is now. If I could do anything this minute it would be to call the author on the phone and find out what happened to her in the ensuing years. On the back fly leaf of the book it says that she is at work on a sequel, I will be anxiously awaiting her next book. I am awestruck by her ability to thrive under the circumstances she grew up in. This book will stay with me forever for many reasons. It is truely amazing. Read it.