Ten Circles Upon the Pond [Paperback]

Virginia Tranel (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 2004

Ten Circles Upon the Pond is a book for anyone who’s ever lived in that unwieldy group called family—a story of passion, intimacy, work, religion, puberty, love and loss, and the struggle to be steadfast in times of enormous social change. Rooted in real-life experience, this unique, beautifully written collection of essays reads like a novel—full of lively characters, spirited dialogue, and a landscape that takes you from Iowa to the high country of Wyoming and Montana. As the chapters unfold, one focused on each child, Virginia Tranel and her husband search for the ideal place to raise the five daughters and five sons born to them between 1957 and 1978.

Tranel artfully weaves daily moments with world events as she reflects on how our culture affects our decisions. She offers candid observations on everything from her reproductive choices and feminism's influence on her thinking to sibling rivalries and her family's emotional response when an architect son emails firsthand reports of the horrors of September 11. Whether considering the issues intrinsic to marriage and child-raising, or questioning her own common sense, her insights are always provocative and deeply moving.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“An unusual and absorbing memoir. . . . Intelligent and candid, crafted in fine prose.” –Kirkus Reviews

“Could not be more timely. . . . Tranel's book will offer a good deal of solace to readers made anxious by current doom-and-gloom headlines. . . . [She] is upbeat, imparting parental wisdom in peppy aphorisms, but she also confides her doubts about her own parenting and her faith.”—Booklist

“Tranel’s simple and poetic prose...combined with her refreshingly open thoughts on life . . . make this portrait accessible to all readers. Highly recommended.” –Library Journal (starred)

“[Tranel] has managed to find a precious connection with all ten of her sons and daughters. That is the beauty of Ten Circles Upon The Pond. . . . [She] shows that she is at once so old-fashioned, yet so wise to the world she raised her brood in.”—Frank Deford, NPR commentator

From the Inside Flap

In this wonderfully warm and humorous, loving and reflective book, Virginia Tranel looks at her life through the ten children she brought so joyously into this world.

In 1957, as a young Catholic-raised bride from Iowa, she headed into the rural West with her husband. Within the year she gave birth under ether to her first child. That son was a senior in college in 1978, when her tenth and last child was born?an unmedicated birth that, in a sense, symbolized her journey toward consciousness during those years of enormous social change.

Virginia Tranel traces that journey by centering one chapter on each child; she weaves back and forth in time, recapturing the dozen moves that her vagabond family made over the years as they sought roots in the Wyoming foothills and the prairie towns of Montana. We crisscross the country with her in a Travelall full of contentious children on the way home from visiting grandparents in Iowa; we share her mortification when the Tranel youngsters unabashedly commandeer the pool at a posh resort where their father is attending a psychologists? convention; we await anxiously for news of the two oldest boys lost hiking in the Rocky Mountains; we anguish with the parents over whether they?ve done enough for a middle daughter.

The scene shifts to the present: to a confrontation with her firstborn, who accuses his mother of polluting the environment with her unbridled fertility; to Mad-rid, where a grown daughter teaches her to face new challenges; to the Alaskan tundra, where another son, who works for the National Park Service, opens up new wonders to his parents; to Atlanta, where daughter Monica is rowing with the U.S. Women?s Eight, favored to take the ?96 Olympic Gold; to New York, where architect son Ben, working in Manhattan, e-mails firsthand reports of the horrors of September 11.

But it is the domestic details over a span of forty years?the kneading of bread, the making of a quilt or a communion dress, a child?s first day of kindergarten, the sharing of closets and clothes and chicken pox?that Virginia Tranel so tellingly describes, leading seamlessly into a homily that always strikes to the heart of the
matter.

Part memoir and part reflection on how our culture affects our choices and shapes the relationship between parents and progeny, this unique book is a deeply probing, moving, and illuminating testament to the power of family, to the bonds that hold us together, and to our connection to the land that nurtures us. It is a truly American story.


From the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Anchor (April 27, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400031214
• ISBN-13: 978-1400031214
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,779,505 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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